FBI Investigating Laser Beams Pointed at Aircraft

sakshale writes "In an earlier discussion about Laser Pistols, many people argued about the concept of using them to target pilots of airliners. Apparently the FBI is investigating incidents in Cleveland and Colorado Springs. They issued a warning on December 14th."

Comments

Green with envy

[SIGALRM]

From LaserShoppe:

Unfortunately, we have decided to STOP selling these lasers to the general public. Too many people have been doing stupid things with lasers recently, and this product is misunderstood. This laser DOES NOT pose a threat to airplanes or pilots

Recent events have prompted LaserShoppe (and other outlets) to pull their products from the market, or at least from sale to the general public. The issue has at least raised laser safety consciousness, and the FBI is right to investigate the incidents, but there is always a tendency for the public and media to over-hype issues like this.

Given some time, and--right or wrong--somebody will attempt to pile on the regulations and we can forget about buying green lasers from ThinkGeek or anyplace else.

Re:Green with envy

[WormholeFiend]

damn, how am I supposed to burn holes in stuff now?

Re:Green with envy

[djtripp]

Magnifying glass, or sulfuric acid.

Re:Green with envy

[BWJones]

Unfortunately, we have decided to STOP selling these lasers to the general public. Too many people have been doing stupid things with lasers recently, and this product is misunderstood. This laser DOES NOT pose a threat to airplanes or pilots

And what do you want to bet they had a visit from their local FBI field office? Purchase records subpoenaed?

Re:Green with envy

[kirun]

The site says if you write an essay on laser safety, they'll sell you one. So write down the first 100 things you were going to try, with an introductory paragraph saying "The following actions are just the sort of irresponsible use of lasers that cause accidents. They should not be attempted".

Re:Green with envy

[grub]

And what do you want to bet they had a visit from their local FBI field office? Purchase records subpoenaed?

Yup, I was thinking the same thing. We must buy our tinfoil hats from the same shop.

Re:Green with envy

[Dashing Leech]

I'm confused about all of this. Lasers would have to be pretty powerful and focused at ultra long range to be of much risk. Hell, we regularly use 100-300 mW lasers and the safe standoff distance is several meters because of beam divergence. It's the power density that is of most concern, and all lasers diverge by diffraction. Laser pointers are usually Is there something I'm missing here?

Re:Green with envy

[RapmasterT]

The utter ludicrousness of the claims in this article are astounding, mostly in how many people have bought it without any question.

While it's entirely likely "something" occured, the dilution of the story through the press has resulted in something that even a child would find fault in.

1. What constitutes a "laser" in the cockpit? A red dot? not likely at 1.5 miles altitude. Not to mention that the range would be a hypotenuse of the altitude and therefore MUCH farther.

2. The accuracy required to "track" the cockpit of a jet aircraft is astounding. This is the kind of test that prototype military weaponry fails routinly.

3. Assuming a laser was used, tracked accurately...what power output would be required for it to even be noticable? The thing would have to be semi-truck mounted.

Anyone think that maybe, it might be likely that this story has been utterly and completely misrepresented by the press? Or that maybe a drunk pilot noticed a reflection off a stray CD in the cockpit and freaked out? I see stray lights on my walls all the time, never once did I think terrorists were trying to blind me.

Re:Green with envy

[Guppy06]

"This laser DOES NOT pose a threat to airplanes or pilots"

Remember: lasers don't kill people, guided weapons that follow laser beams kill people.

Re:Green with envy

[myowntrueself]

I think that the 'green dot' would have to be from a laser which was up there with the airliner.

If there were much distance between the laser and the cockpit it wouldn't be much of a 'dot' and besides the tracking problem would be huge.

No; this laser must be from another aircraft, probably military.

The question is, what sort of lasers do the military use for painting targets? Green?

Or maybe its just bullshit to start with.

Re:Green with envy

[RapmasterT]

I think that the 'green dot' would have to be from a laser which was up there with the airliner.

Exactly my thought. I'll bet the copilot was screwing with the pilot, and now is afraid to admit it cuz he'd be in it deep. As far as the military goes, I don't know much about weapons guidance systems, but I'll bet they're not VISIBLE lasers.

Re:Green with envy

[angel'o'sphere]

Hm,

I have the impression you doint know what a 100 mW or a 300 mW laser is?

Standard laser pointers are made to divergent, the outlet of the beam has usually a small drop of plastic or glass to achieve that.

A 100mW laser easily blinds you. And if you have bad luck it does so permanently (usually only the parts imediatly hit, that is ~ a millimeters in diameter, but can be more).

A 300mW laser easily cut plastics, paper, wood etc. The lasers sold here http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/28/185325 3&tid=159/ are only 180 mW to 200mW and allready cut plastic cups over a few meters distance.

You probably have a key missconception: lasers usually do NOT divergent (or only a very little), thats exactly what makes a laser different from normal light.

angel'o'sphere

Re:Green with envy

[KILNA]

If I were making a laser blinding system...

I would use multiple cheap consumer green laser pointers packed into a tight area to target about the size of a single window of a cockpit. Imagine a rack of 25x25 lasers modded to output 15mw (search ebay for "laser pointer mod*"), which could be purchased for the $50,000 the FBI said a system could be built for. It would be about 1-2ft square. and mounted on a piece of plywood.

To fire it I would find high ground near the approach for an airport, attempting to get as close to straight in front of the approach path for the plane as possible. This way, from the firing perspective, even though the plane may be going at an very high speed, it will be virtually still since it's coming right at me. Since I'm on the approach for the plane, I stand to do the most damage since landing is the trickiest part of flying, and if I catch the pilot in-flight they may have time for their eyes to recover. Since I'm on high ground, and if I find a really good spot, I can be more or less parallel with the cockpit... though it doesn't matter too much since the pilot will be looking downward (toward the instruments and/or landing strip).

This eliminates the tracking issue, the power issue, and you can use the little cheap batteries that come with the laser pointers. The only thing that may be questionable is the effectiveness of 15mw lasers at the distances involved, but it only takes a split second to blind a guy and you have the whole approach to try to hit the pilot. With a good firing position, you could certainly aim the array within less than a mile's range.

Re:Green with envy

[nxtr]

There is no problem with pointing them at airplanes far, far away flying overhead in mid-flight. However, this poses a huge problem for airplane pilots on approach or right after takeoff.

Re:Green with envy

[Zeinfeld]

Well lets see, the guy is selling high powered green lasers to responsible members of the public at $700 a time

Exactly how does someone have $700 worth of fun with a laser in a responsible fashion? Its not like the thing is powerful enough to do really cool things like cut James bond in half or something.

Incidentally, if Goldfinger had really known what he was up to he would have had Bond upside down on the slab of gold. This was the general practice in the middle ages when sawing a man in half was a means of execution. If the victim was upside down then the blood loss was less and they could be kept alive until the saw got down to the heart.

Re:Green with envy

[RapmasterT]

This almost exact idea was played out in a Tom Clancy novel, I think it was "Debt of Honor". One of the CIA guys (or whatever agency it was, it was a long time ago) used an ultra-high powered spotlight to blind the pilots of landing airliners, causing them to crash (read the book, it explains why he was still a good guy).

I could probably make a pretty good show of it with my handheld, battery powered 2.5 million candlepower spotlight out at the local airport. Or for that matter, on the local interstate (If I'm satisfied with carnage on a smaller scale).

Re:Green with envy

[Valar]

Actually, from what I hear it was more like an 850 ft altitude, during landing. The idea is the prevent the pilot from seeing during the time that he needs his vision the most. I would suspect that the amount of power involved was the reason that nothing really happened. And actually, I think not a laser, but a very bright, somewhat directional beam of light would work better. Tom Clancy wrote about using bright light to cause plane crashes in Debt of Honor. Of course, he also wrote about an airliner crashing into the capital building...

Re:Green with envy

[KILNA]

Was it? The only Tom Clancy I've been exposed to also involved Harrison Ford.

The point of it is, you have 625 lasers, they don't need to be finely calibrated. You are playing the odds, and random or perfectly aligned won't make much of a difference in this case, since you'll probably be waiting until the plane's pretty close before pulling the trigger, your aim won't be perfect, you're just hoping the pilot's eyes are in the gigantic bright splotch you've created.

And DAMN would it look cool, especially if they were all slightly off. :)

Re:Green with envy

[RapmasterT]

On Christmas night, two SkyWest pilots said they saw two laser-like rays of light in their cockpit as they attempted to land at the airport in Medford, Ore.

On Monday, a laser beam was directed into the cockpit of a commercial jet flying about 15 miles from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport at an altitude of between 8,500 and 10,000 feet, the FBI said. It was determined the laser came from a residential area in suburban Warrensville Heights.

Also on Monday in Colorado Springs, two pilots reported green pulsating laser lights beamed into their cockpits. Police sent patrol cars and a helicopter in a fruitless search.

In New Jersey, the pilot of a corporate-owned Cessna Citation carrying 13 people said three green lasers were pointed into his cockpit while approaching the Teterboro airport on Wednesday night. Law enforcement officials said they were believed to have originated near a mall in Wayne.

I'm sorry, but don't these anecdotes remind you just a little bit of the "mysterious odor sends dozens to hospital at local mall" stories on the news?

One person says they smell a laser, someone else says "hey, I smell lasers in my cockpit too". Next thing you know, you're nobody unless terrorists are illuminating your cockpit with lasers. Lasers that smell mysterious.

Re:Green with envy

[beerits]

ultra-high powered spotlight to blind the pilots of landing airliners, causing them to crash (read the book, it explains why he was still a good guy).

As I recall they were not airliners but were the Japanese equivalent of AWACs.

Re:Green with envy

[Nikker]

I completely agree.

For some one to not only target a plane moving at landing speed of atleast 300+ KM/h but also get inside the cockpit? May be on a bank but not during a runway approach. Oh and don't forget only the top half of the cockpit is glass in most planes. So this means the 'terrorist' must have been well ahead of the plane to get it inside.

Also on of the articles mentions in Cleveland the plane was aprox 8500ft in the air. We also have to take into consideration the cloud celling which currently is at 2000ft . So if there was cloud that day they would have been covered from the ground looking up.

So even if some how someone with a super duper laser pointer was able to place the dot with superhuman insane accuracy not just on the plane going 300Km/h (on landing approach usually 500+ on cruse) that person also managed to keep it inside the cockpit to make the pilots feel like they were being tracked? WOW that is pretty good.

Now they must have pretty good faith in the general population if they think not allowing others to puchace these lasers will make pilots safer. Its the people who have the same aptitude, that I would be worried about. Eventhough I doubt that was done souly by a steady hand some one should come up with some serious numbers because this sounds like someone is on serious drugs to accuse joe six pack for this.

Re:Green with envy

[RapmasterT]

Yeah, that's right. I couldn't remember why it was ok to crash passenger aircraft, now it makes sense.

Like I said, I read it a looong time ago. ;-)

Re:Green with envy

[returnoftheyeti]

Humm, I think we need to ban Tom Clancy novels Lets see 1) Crash airline into building, take out government. Check 2) Blind pilots on approach, crash plane Check Whats next? I am voting for Jack Ryan in the next election.

Re:Green with envy

[returnoftheyeti]

That was some crappy formatting, I apologize

And no, they didn't take out the government, so dont flame me too much. But they did inspire fear and strike terror into the hearts of Americans, just like the book.

Re:Green with envy

[Mr. No Skills]

I believe targeting systems for military are infrared - would not be visible to human eyes. Bombs and missles home in on the "painted" target, and it would obviously give away the fact that something is being targeted if it was visible light.

Snipers use a visible red dot, of course, since they have to see it (at least old school snipers).

Re:Green with envy

[Mr. No Skills]

Still an interesting point. Osama Bin Laden a Clancy fan? Someone stop that guy from writing books.

Re:Green with envy

[afidel]

Yep, the area where they think the light origionated in Cleveland is ~3-4 miles from the airport and directly along the main fair weather decent path. That means it's less than a minute from touchdown and fairly low altitude. At that kind of range a laser like the green one linked to in the article could easily have a beam spread tight enough to look like a baseball to basketball sized dot on the cockpit window. Targeting an airliner moving at around 300mph wouldn't be THAT hard, and who knows the culprit(s) may have targeted many planes before hitting the cockpit of the reported plane.

Re:Green with envy

[Mikeydude750]

As much as I agree with your statement, I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say this:

Guns: Massive(in the sense that it has mass) bundles of heavy metals being propelled by gunpower, resulting in a speed of hundreds of meters per second(still fast, but can potentially dodge if you're far enough away and able to step out of the wa)y. The shooter has to compensate for the target moving if necessary. Shouldn't be banned because of the Second Amendment(obviously), and the fact that people should be able to do what they want if they are responsible and will not try to harm someone.

Lasers: Massless(bunch of high powered photons) bundles of pure energy travelling at 3*10^9 meters per second. All you need if you have a sufficiently powerful laser is to point the thing at your target and fire. No compensation for movement needed if all you need to do is briefly flash the beam to damage the target. Even a supposedly "harmless" laser can cause blindness...could potentially blind someone doing something imporant(like, flying planes). That said, lasers shouldn't be banned either. The whole "freedom" thing applies to most dangerous activities as well(also the same reason why I disagree with banning drugs, abortions, and prostitution).

Then again, you don't see people carrying 50 watt CO2 lasers and being able to hold them, do you? It would be relatively easy to create a laser turret capable of cutting through steel, and pointing it near an airport. That is, if they can compensate for the atmosphere distorting and dissipating the laser. For now, as long as the power supplies capable of getting the voltages high enough to power a laser powerful enough to kill someone are the size of large trucks, guns would be more dangerous.

Re:Green with envy

[Phanatic1a]

asers usually do NOT divergent (or only a very little), thats exactly what makes a laser different from normal light.

What makes a laser different from normal light is that it is coherent and monochromatic.

Uncollimated laser light obeys the inverse-square law. Even collimated laser light obeys it, it's just that you need to treat the initial range to the source as greater than it actually is - the 'source' of the beam isn't the exit lens, but is represented as a point behind that lens. The more collimated the beam, the further behind. Ferinstance, using numbers pulled right from my butt, if the beam divergence is 1 mrad, and the beam diameter at the exit lens is 1 mm, then the effective source of the light is a point one meter further away than the exit lens. If you then measure the beam intensity at 5 cm and 10 cm from the exit lens, it won't look like it's falling off as the inverse square, because the beam only widened by about 9%. But really, you didn't double the distance, you only increased it from 105 cm to 110 cm.

Re:Green with envy

[LurkerXXX]

Sure, but you could use a better laser.

Here's one that's 150W instead of 150mW. 1000x as powerful. More than enough power to overcome that 1/457 power loss from divergence.

Re:Green with envy

[Mr_Whoopass]

Ok, now that all the cockpits have safety doors, one thing I also recall is that they have large fisheye peephole lens to match.

Hear me out...

Maybe, just maybe, the lasers are originating from inside the plane themselves? Perhaps the laser is retaining its cohesion through this "peephole". I mean, if you think about it, how often does somebody notice a laser dot on them? When toying around with one at work, the only times people really consistantly noticed it is when I would point the dot at something in their field of view and in the same direction they are looking (if it is non-transparent). This theory might also gain credence when you realize the direction in which the pilots are facing considering the afore mentioned experience.

Now if only they disclosed WHERE in the cockpit the laser was hitting we could begin to assume whether it was originating from the ground or behind the pilots.

Ultimately, if I had my guess it's the unsupervised little 8 year old shit in 14c that keeps kicking my chair.

Re:Green with envy

[Cpt_Kirks]

Exactly how does someone have $700 worth of fun with a laser in a responsible fashion?

Use it to "key" cars in public, without being noticed (in day time).

Write your name in the snow.

Light a chicks cigarette from across the room.

Use it to heat your coffee.

Modify billboards.

Just don't hurt people with it. Unless they really, really need it. Could you toast a cell phone with it, I wonder?

Re:Green with envy

[roseblood]

You:
Snipers use a visible red dot, of course, since they have to see it (at least old school snipers).

Me:
Snipers in movies use a visible red dot.
Real snipers use passive optical sights - that is they don't send a signal to the target, they passively collect data (light [visible or IR]) from the target. Old school snipers use iron sights with high quality Mk 1 Eyeballs.

Re:Green with envy

[Lectrik]

If the victim was upside down then the blood loss was less and they could be kept alive until the saw got down to the heart.

I think Goldfinger was expecting the laser to cauterize the wound as it went. Then again i don't have my Evil Master(mind)s degree in psychology.

Re:Green with envy

[myowntrueself]

Ok, so on the one hand, who *does* use green lasers? If I recall correctly theres something about green lasers and water... and a touch of googling confirms this I think.

So, the perpetrator is someone who uses lasers underwater.

And on the other hand, I recall a book... one of the 'war against the cthor' series, where they had this high powered automatic weapon targetting laser hooked up to a headset. The laser and the headset would cycle through wavelengths in sync with one another (pseudorandom sequence starting from the same seed) so that it was impossible to locate the sniper by looking for his sighting laser.

The disadvantage was that the view through the goggles was truly surreal as they created false-color images of whatever you are looking at, in whatever portion of the spectrum the system is tuned to at that moment.

You see the sighting laser and the painted target but you also see your surroundings in... a different light.

Re:Green with envy

[DrMrLordX]

Fresnel Lense! Get one from an overhead projector or something? Maybe?

Re:Green with envy

[cthulhu11]

I thought it was gargoyles who kill people. Maybe gargoyles with lasers?

Re:Green with envy

[iamroot]

I understand the situation the LaserShoppe guy is in. As someone planning to start selling a 50-100 watt CO2 laser kit this summer(should be good for laser engraving and lightweight cutting of wood/plastic/cloth with a CNC table), this kind of news really worries me. A CO2 laser under several KW would pose very little threat to aircraft since regular glass blocks the beam, but if these incidents became bad enough to become "top stories", I doubt most people would make the distinction(including police/FBI).

The problem is that no matter how responsible 99% of the buyers are, there is still that idiot who does something stupid and gets hurt. I don't want to be at the center of any media/legal feeding frenzy. For the safety information, I'm thinking some "raw meat vs. laser" photos and a very clear safety description should help get the point across, but after reading some of the posts on the Amazing1.com forums, my faith in people's judgement is pretty low. Of course, that also assumes that nobody buys it FOR irresponsible/illegal purposes.

The CO2 laser is hundreds of times as powerful as the little LaserShoppe one and putting your hand in the beam is a big no-no(the above videos from Synrad.com probably make that clear enough). On the positive side, eye protection isn't as big a problem, since most materials will absorb the 1060nm infrared light. Regular safety goggles work fine.

I guess the biggest problem with selling lasers is that most people are nearly 100% clueless about them. A lot of people think lasers are something they aren't, don't understand what they do, and/or are just plain stupid.

Re:Green with envy

[Bios_Hakr]

2. The accuracy required to "catch a ball" is astounding. This is the kind of test that prototype robots fails routinly.

Sure, it may be hard for a computer to trach a moving target, But I can do it easily. This isn't about people zapping airliners at FL30, it's about pranksters zapping them as they land. People sit on parking decks or stand near the perimeter fence and try to "hit" airplanes as they land.

Another example: Where I work, we have people "shoot" our guards at least twice a day. These guys and girls are just trying to do their job and they see a red dot on their chest. How would you react?

Re:Green with envy

[Z00L00K]

In my opinion, most of the laser abuse are done by kids not knowing what they are doing. In some cases the abuse is by adults with the mind of a kid. (either permanently or induced by some artificial means like alcohol etc.)

Only a few are actually using the lasers for a more sinister purpose, but they are dangerous to the public in any case since they are blinded by hate, mental illness or confusion and will probably be dangerous with any hard object (and some soft objects) in their hands.

It is of course not acceptable to point lasers at people in other vehicles (airborne or not) and it shall be punished according to intention. The step from using the laser as a device itself to the combination with other weapons like laser-seeking missiles is fairly large.

The problem as I see it is that the lasers with visible light aren't that dangerous to others, since the light is visible. The infrared lasers are much more dangerous, since the light is invisible. You wouldn't notice any eye injury until it's too late. Injury caused by visible light is normally limited by the normal reflexes of the eye.

In the near future we will also have UV-lasers, and they pose a threat too, since the radiation they are emitting is of a fairly high energy that can cause permanent damage to the eyes. UV damage to eyes is actually a risk even today for those that are sunbathing. Not all sunglasses are actually protecting against UV, some are even transparent to UV radiation!

Re:Green with envy

[chaoaretasty]

It's not gargoyles, it's friggin sharks with frickin lasers attatched to their heads.

Re:Green with envy

[Mycroft_VIII]

possible small glitch with your scenario.
"even though the plane may be going at an very high speed, it will be virtually still since it's coming right at me."
Personaly I wouldn't want a 747 with a blind pilot comming right at me.

Mycroft

Re:Green with envy

[arivanov]

The ridiculous aspect of the story is due to censorship.

The only way to pick up a laser pointed in an aircraft from the ground is if the aircraft has a missile warning system installed. Most of these have a component which picks up illumination by laser distance/speed measurement equipment.

Officially no US airline carries such thing (Israeli do, British Airways is considering it for some flights). Unofficially - the appearance of the article means that quite a few have it already or plan to do so and are testing equipment. They just do not want to shout about it.

Re:Green with envy

[MadMorf]

The question is, what sort of lasers do the military use for painting targets? Green?

Infrared.

I know, I got to "fire" one from a USAF F-4D back in the 70's...

Yep, I'm old...

Re:Green with envy

[mkettler]

I agree on 1 and 2. Clearly if it tracked the cockpit with any decent accuracy it wasn't done by hand or by unsophisticated highscool pranksters.

Of course they never pointed out how accurately it was tracked. If it was just poping in and out of the cockpit on an intermittent basis, it could have been done by hand with a rifle scope or telescope to aid aiming.

However, power output wise, I must disagree about the truck mounted size. A class IIIa green laser pointer is visible hitting a target 2 miles away.

Sure you'd want something more powerful to be noticed clearly, a class IIIb device at least, but that at worst might make the laser itself the size of a pringles can instead of a laser pointer.

Now to accurately track it, the tracking gear might add a lot of size, but even that would be feasible to fit in a car trunk.

Re:Green with envy

[cortana]

Oh come on, this is the same kind of argument that Reagan's yes men made for the existance of (among other things) a Soviet missile defence system. The CIA repeatedly said that there was no evidence that the USSR had anywhere near the technology or resources to pull off such a thing, and that furthermore their economy was collapsing--Team B retorted that this was an elaborate ruse by the Soviets, and if the CIA couldn't see evidence of such a system then the Soviet system was obviously SO ADVANCED that it was undetetectable!

I think it's a far more likely explanation that a copilot, cabin crewmember or passenger was messing around with a laser pointer. :)

Re:Green with envy

[Dashing Leech]

Actually, I know quite well about what 100 mW lasers can do. You've taken a lot of assumptions into account. Yes, a 100 mW laser can cut plastics and wood and permanently blind you (and even burn skin), but that all depends on (a) the wavelength, (b) the focus distance (or collimation), and (c) length of stationary time.

Near IR lasers tend to be absorbed by the front of the eye and not make it to the retina. (That doesn't mean they can't do harm to the eye, but not in the same way.) But this isn't so important here since we're talking about red and green lasers which can certainly burn the retina.

For focus disance or collimation, lasers are usually either collimated or focused near the lens (a few cm up to a few meters, though some long range lidar lasers might be focused much further). In either case, the beam divergence is usually quite huge (several milliradians at least. The only way to keep the beam divergence low is to start with a very wide beam. (The divergence equation is theta = lambda*f/w0 where f is the focus distance and w0 is the beam width out of the lens.)

Laser pointers are low quality optics (as you say) and are only mean to operate at a few meters, with a spot size that is ~5 mm at a few meters. At several km where planes fly, the laser spot size would be huge. (A 1 mrad divergence at 1 km would be about a 2 m wide spot.) The power density of even 100 mW beam at that width would be pretty small and certainly could not cut through plastic or harm eyes.

Then there's how stationary the beam is. The 100 mW beam requires a few seconds of stationary positioning to cut into the plastic. In the example video from your reference article the beam is mounted on a stationary holder. If even the person held it in their hands just the hand motion would probably keep it from burning through. At 1 km (or more), only a slight hand motion would move the beam around several meters, not to mention the plane itself is moving.

Re:Green with envy

[CarrionBird]

Check out the Aimpoint sights. The red dot stays within the scope. Pretty cool, although mine has no magnification whatsoever.

Re:Green with envy

[ScrewMaster]

Not exactly. Collimation is relatively easy to achieve even with non-coherent light (the first hologram was taken prior to the invention of the laser, using a collimated rotating zirconium arc.) However, a laser is a. monochromatic and (more importantly) coherent. All the light waves are at the same frequency and in lockstep. It is the coherency of laser light that makes it so dangerous since the heating effect is much greater at a given power level. Granted, cheap laser diodes have a coherency length measured in millimeters, but a high quality HE-NE laser may have a coherence length of miles.

Re:Green with envy

[stonecypher]

With the powers of your mind.

Re:Green with envy

[roseblood]

These are nice for SIDEARMS and SHOTGUNS. Not much use for a sniper when your Aimpoint sight has a red dot that covers 3 inches at 100 meters. No precision there (in relative terms.)

Re:Green with envy

[angel'o'sphere]

Well it boils done to childish but you are wrong no you are wrong ... arguments.

Again: a laser does in theory not divergent. Sorry, you are wrong! Coherent light, from a perfect coherent light source, does not divergent. Thats exactly the point.

In practice we can not make "perfect" lasers. Thats why you asume they do divergent.

angel'o'sphere

Re:Green with envy

[Dashing Leech]

(The divergence equation is theta = lambda*f/w0 where f is the focus distance and w0 is the beam width out of the lens.)

I realized after I posted this that the equation was slightly wrong (going from memory in a hurry), I was thinking of spot diameter and not divergence angle (and still left out pi). The divergence is approximately theta(rad) = lambda/(pi*w0). The spot radius at a given distance Z is approximately w = lambda*Z/(pi*w0).

With really good optics you might be able to keep it to about 50 cm spot diameter at 2 km. (Assuming it leaves the collimator at 3 mm diameter (w0 = 1.5 mm) and a green laser at 532 nm wavelength, sub into above equation to get dia = 2*w = 2*(532e-9 m * 2e3 m)/(pi * 1.5 e-3 m) = 0.45 m = 45 cm). Of course this is with good optics, which I'll assume the 100 mW laser comes with. (Laser pointers tend not to have good optics, so they'd probably not be diffraction limited and produce much bigger spots.) Since the divergence scales linearly with wavelength, a red laser (say ~665 nm) would be about 25% wider spot.

Even at that it looks like the relative steady position of the beam is the bigger problem. How do you get the beam to stay in the pilot's eyes for long enough to do damage? The plane is moving pretty fast so the pointer would have to be on pan-tilt that tracks the plane very precisely and also can get in the plane window somehow.

Re:Green with envy

[Dashing Leech]

Whoops, I meant to add a comparison. A 100 mW laser with a 50 cm diameter spot (which is a generous estimate for hitting an airplane at 2 km) has an average power density of about 0.5 W/m^2 ( 0.1 W / (pi*(0.25 m)^2) ). By comparison, a 5 mW laser pointer at about 10 m (across the room), assuming it is about 5 mm diameter spot, has an average power density of about 250 W/m^2 ( 0.005 W / (pi*(0.0025 m)^2 ). In other words, a laser pointer from across a large room is about 500 times more dangerous to the eye than a 100 mW laser at 2 km, and it's about 200 times easier to keep the laser pointer in someone's eye across a 10 m room than at 2 km (assuing the same pointing precision), and that doesn't include the motion of the airplane. (Of course this is an approximation since it assumes average power density, and they're Gaussian distribution so peak is not quite this ratio.)

So, I fail to see how these things (even the 100 mW lasers) could pose a potential threat to pilots in airplanes. Where are they pointing from anyway? You can't hit a pilot in the eye from below.

Re:Green with envy

[Mooga]

Is it posible the laser reflects off the windsheld and "blinds" the piolt since the window is curved and such?

I don't know much on the subject but can it be like when you're driving at night and be blinded by the oncoming lights? (yes, I know that lasers are much smaller then driving lights)

Re:Green with envy

[gstoddart]

Use it to "key" cars in public, without being noticed (in day time).

Write your name in the snow.

Light a chicks cigarette from across the room.

Use it to heat your coffee.

Modify billboards.

No no no. You're trying to have tens-of-thousands of dollars worth of fun with a $700 laser.

You neeed to limit your self to things like:

• make cat chase laser
• give powerpoint slideshow with new-fangled pointing device
• distract pilots
• go to jail

There no where near selling you a laser that can do any of those cool things for $700. I'm holding out for one of them through. =)

nothing for you to see here

[networkBoy]

So fitting. I was blinded by the laser
-nB

Coast Guard checks out lasers aimed at boats...

[PornMaster]

By sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads...

Re:Coast Guard checks out lasers aimed at boats...

[ergo98]

Interestingly a Russian trawler (actually a spy ship) purportedly did aim a laser at a Canadian military helicopter in 1997. This incident was pretty much brushed under the carpet (just as the recent findings regarding Chinese spying in Canada will undoubtedly be).

Re:Coast Guard checks out lasers aimed at boats...

[Wyatt Earp]

http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/newsletter/20 04/0104d.shtml

he Pentagon inspector general has asked the Navy to consider awarding JW client Lt. Cmdr. Jack Daly (Ret.) a purple heart for injuries he suffered as a result of being shot with a laser by a Russian spy ship. Curiously, however, the Navy to this day maintains Jack's injuries never occurred. And evidence compiled by Judicial Watch suggests the Clinton Administration covered up the attack in order to avoid international conflict.

"Jack Daly certainly deserves a medal for his injury from a hostile force," said JW President Tom Fitton. "For more than six years, the U.S. government has refused to acknowledge an attack of a U.S. serviceman in American waters."

"Lt. Cmdr. Jack Daly (Ret.) was partially blinded by a laser attack. The laser was fired at Daly from the Russian spy ship Kapitan Man in April, 1997, while Daly was on an official reconnaissance mission, flying over the Straits of Juan de Fuca, Puget Sound, WA. During his surveillance, which took place aboard a Canadian military helicopter, Daly felt a flash of brilliant light strike his eyes, causing him to turn away. Later in the day he would experience stinging in his eyes and sharp pains in his head. The next morning he awoke with a small pool of blood in one of his eyes.

Military doctors told Daly that he and his Canadian chopper pilot, Captain Pat Barnes (Ret.), had been shot at with a laser by the Russians. The damage would be permanent.

Rather than standing by their injured military official, however, Clinton Administration officials treated the incident as an inconvenient stumbling block on the path to improved relations with the Russian government and covered it up.

The Kapitan Man was not searched until several days later and only after at least 10 hours advanced warning given to the Russians. Though a thorough search should have taken 2-3 days, U.S. inspectors were aboard for less than 4 hours. Predictably, no evidence was found.

Judicial Watch currently has an appeal pending for Jack Daly against the Far East Shipping Company, the owners of the Kapitan Man."

Re:Coast Guard checks out lasers aimed at boats...

[killjoe]

Didn't judicial watch sue clinton and democrats like 300 times or something.

Re:Coast Guard checks out lasers aimed at boats...

[mickyflynn]

wasn't this an episode of JAG and not a real story? it turned out the pilot was blasting himself with a laser in his garage to collect disability and he wasn't blinded by some insidious north korean energy weapon.

Re:Coast Guard checks out lasers aimed at boats...

[ergo98]

I'm not sure if you're being serious or not, but both the US and Canadian pilots were affected by the exposure.

Re:Coast Guard checks out lasers aimed at boats...

[Wyatt Earp]

So what if they did? Of the last three Presidents, President Clinton was the most open to lawsuits of a personal nature. But what Judical Watch did or didn't isn't the reason I linked to it. It was the place with the most info on the lasing of the Canadians and Americans by the Russians from my Google search.

Re:Coast Guard checks out lasers aimed at boats...

[mickyflynn]

no, there was totally an episode of JAG where they did that. it was the one where the fat guy had a broken leg and was hobbling around on crutches to solve the mystery or whatever. i've only seen like, 3 episodes and i didn't see the whole one of this. but the dude had this whole thing rigged up in his garage and knew just how much to make it temporary for the doctors but not do him any lasting damage. he was trying to blame it on korean spy weapons in the china sea.

Re:Coast Guard checks out lasers aimed at boats...

[MikePlacid]

Judicial Watch currently has an appeal pending for Jack Daly against the Far East Shipping Company, the owners of the Kapitan Man.

Something does not fit here. Russian spy ships are owned by the Russian Navy, not by a merchant cargo company.

Re:Coast Guard checks out lasers aimed at boats...

[x736e65616b]

Canada has a military!?

-j

Heed ye the warning

[Tackhead]

> Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

CmdrTaco always regretted his decision to stare into the beam with his remaining good eye.

Freakin laser beams

[bfizzle]

Well if people would put tops to their shark tanks we wouldn't be having this problem, now would we?

Re:Freakin laser beams

[powderbluedictator]

Imagine what some terrorists with a beowulf of these lasers could do......

More info

[johnnyb]

Some good links from FreeRepublic.

Seems like Dr. Evil and his "laser beam" are finally starting to do their evil deeds!

Re:More info

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah if it is mentioned in freerepublic.com it must be true.

Complementary article

[Stevyn]

More information in this article that may be helpful. I think this is potentially a very serious problem.

Re:Complementary article

[Lumpy]

no it is not.

any laser that the general public can get their hands on will DO NO DAMAGE to a pilot or even distract them.

first off even the high power green ones, at the 100 meters or MORE distance these people are at, they need to retrofit the laser with a tripod, fluid head and a high power scope just to hit the plane.

Now let's addin the fac tt hat the angle if incidence of the beam to the cockpit window is at such an extreme angle that less than 20% of the beam will pass through the window, and THAT will get attenuated further by the cockpit glass.

let's further add that the pilot is looking at the centerline of the runway and not directly at things that might be interesting, and if it's a clear sunny day a reflection glint off cars in the parking lot is 200 times brighter than any consumer laser.

this is nothing but a bunch of people freaking out about isolated incidents.

if I was able to get my hands on a targeting laser, Yes, that MIGHT be able to hit the cockpit window because of the gyro stablization of the optics and laser, but then it's infrared so NOBODY would know it was hitting it!

can I get my hands on industrial lasers? yeah if I look hard enough, but you certianly will not run them off some portable battery for longer than a few seconds.

it is NOT a serious problem. Quit being a scared soccer mom.

Re:Complementary article

[harlows_monkeys]

this is nothing but a bunch of people freaking out about isolated incidents

Well, that's a relief. When a blinded pilot crashes on top of me, it will be quite comforting to know that it was an isolated incident, so I needn't worry about it happening too often.

Re:Complementary article

[poopdeville]

Good work evaluating the article's merits. You've done a brilliant job undermining its points.

Re:Complementary article

[Moofie]

Do you cross the street?

If you're not worried about crossing the street, why the hell are you worried about getting hit in the head with an airplane?

Re:Complementary article

[LoRdTAW]

I once worked for a guy who bought and sold all types of electronic surplus. One neat toy he got one lot was a 20W water cooled laser. It consumed about 23KW I believe and needed a 3 phase 208v supply. I offerd to buy it but the three phase power needed would be too difficult to provide unless I bought a 3 phase generator. So yes the general public can obtain very powerful lasers if they look hard enough.

Re:Complementary article

[nolife]

You can not fire model rockets within a certain range of an airport, the package and included instructions say so!

BTW, what exactly does a few pieces of tin foil do that would be so drastic? I think a flock of birds would be far worse.

Re:Complementary article

[tiny69]

any laser that the general public can get their hands on will DO NO DAMAGE to a pilot or even distract them.

There's already one report of a pilot having his eyesight damaged because of a laser being shined into the cockpit of an airplane that he was flying.

this is nothing but a bunch of people freaking out about isolated incidents.

Tom Clancy used the idea of blinding pilots in his book "Debt of Honor". However, high powered strobe lights was used instead of lasers. A number of news reports picked up on this when it first become public in the beginning of December.

While your average laser pointer couldn't do much, it's not hard to get higher powered lasers for educational or commercial purposes.

if I was able to get my hands on a targeting laser, Yes, that MIGHT be able to hit the cockpit window because of the gyro stablization of the optics and laser, but then it's infrared so NOBODY would know it was hitting it!

I guess you never tried to shine sunlight into someones eyes with a mirror as a kid. It's not as hard as you think, even with a moving target. No, it wouldn't be a steady beam shining into the cockpit. But with a stong enough laser, the beam wouldn't need to be steady.

Do you really think that a terrorist organization that is determined and resourced enough to pull off 9/11 couldn't get ahold of a few high powered lasers?

Re:Complementary article

[adeydas]

"they misunderestimated the laser"

Re:Complementary article

[Turfoil]

if you had a 20W laser, couldnt you just saw the wing off?

Re:Complementary article

[tiny69]

Maybe the real result is just scattering radiation from the Air Force's airborne laser test fires...

The conspiracy theorists are simply amazing. So a test of an airborne laser over the Pacific is "scattering" into the cockpits of airplanes near Cleveland and Colorado Springs? The last test in December was aborted before the missle even got off of the ground.

Dude, you need to pass around whatever it is that you are smoking....

Re:Complementary article

[One Childish N00b]

I guess you never tried to shine sunlight into someones eyes with a mirror as a kid. It's not as hard as you think, even with a moving target.

I think it'd be a little harder than you think if that moving target was doing hundreds of miles an hour, thousands of feet up in the air - remember, a jet aircraft in flight likely to be a tad more difficult to hit than the fat kid who sat at the back of Maths class, no matter what you're packing. I understand this could be a serious issue, but I don't think it's enough for us to start up the Islamic Terrorist Groupthink Machine just yet.

Re:Complementary article

[Mycroft_VIII]

Actually just tinfoil wouldn't be so bad, but cut the foil in the right length (1/4 wavelength of the radar system IIRC) and you have more serious problems.
I know there are some methods now for dealing with chaff, but how effective they are, what they are, and whether airport radar uses them is questionable.
Bassically what chaff is, is lots of metal confetti in the air of just the right lenght(s) to really screw up the outgoing and returning radar signals.
Also I believe some(all comercial?) planes have thier own radar systems that could be susceptable.
So what happens when the atc tower suddlenly see's hundreds of phantom images or static and a bunch of planes suddenly have thier radar warning that thier about to be hit by a dozen other planes at once. could be bad.

Mycroft

Re:Complementary article

[Lumpy]

Ok first a laser beam is extremely small compared to the softball and larger reflected beam from the sun. and I guarentee that you can not easily hit a person 2 miles away with that mirror. do you even realize how aircraft landing works? you start your approach from 10-20 miles out. on a normal day most people can not see the aircraft on approach until it is inside 5 miles and that is when it is clear and no landing lights are on. Let's for get that most metro airports have so much smog around them that the ground visibility is less than that.

now you are trying to hit the plane with a laser. a consumer or commercial laser is collimated for close distances, so now you need to be a laser expert to collimate the beam for the distance range you are looking for or the beam spread will be so large that you would be nothing but a coherent light spotlight at that range. Have you ever played with a laser before? even a high end HeNe laser has a beam spread of almost 6cm after 100 meters. There is a reason that amateur and real laser research takes place on huge slabs of concrete and steel. (amateur research takes place in an old waterbed frame full of sand with a worktop on top of it.) you need to dampen the vibrations from the ground that severely effect the beam espically if you have a longer distance that you are fiting the beam.

as for your last statement. Yes they could get a few high powered lasers, do I think they could get enough knowlege and equiupment to first power them portably, adjust the collimation and build a stabalization and aiming system from scratch for thes e things? not a chance. We certianly are not talking about PHd's and people with an IQ over 120 here, we are talking about terrorists.

Can it be done? yes, I certianly could given the 12 years of hobbiest experience with lasers and holography I have, but I do not have the skills to aim such a device. Do I think that terrorists or anyone else that is not well versed in optics, laser stabilization, engineering and then finally a world class expert sniper? not likely.

Plus you would need to be on the ground VERY close to the end of the runway, inside the security parimiter of the airport with a van full of equipment.

Re:Complementary article

[Frogbert]

How can you call anyone who basically took a plain by force using a stanly knife resourceful? That isn't that hard to do if you and enough friends want to.

Re:Complementary article

[rbullo]

We certianly are not talking about PHd's and people with an IQ over 120 here, we are talking about terrorists.

Actually, the men near the top of the chain are generally very intelligent. Remember, these men are recruiting others to detonate themselves in crowded marketplaces. Their PR abilities are second to none(for an example of this, go to a market in Islamabad and check out the posters venerating Osama bin Laden). Many of them do have American degrees, including PHd's. These are the same men who planned attacks in some of the most secure areas in the world. Don't underestimate them.

Re:Complementary article

[solar-ray]

You've outlogic'ed yourself: "Do you really think that a terrorist organization that is determined and resourced enough to pull off 9/11 couldn't get ahold of a few high powered lasers?" Absolutely! So why--duh!--is the FBI fooling around with lasers powered by a pair of penlight batteries? You also noted, "I guess you never tried to shine sunlight into someones eyes with a mirror as a kid. It's not as hard as you think, even with a moving target." And nobody died when you tried it, right? Guess what--the power from that reflected bit of sunlight is many, many times more powerful than the output of a laser-pointer. Sure there are real threats. That's why it ticks me off that the FBI, like a bunch of science-retards, swings into high-speed and utterly useless action. Their new motto should be: "When in trouble, when in doubt, Run in circles, scream and shout!" (http://64.30.203.214/pub/oe/2005/01/scientific_il li_1.html)

Questioning this...

[Anonymous Coward]

How can a laser beam travel round the nose of a plane overhead, and accurately reach the pilot's eyes from say, a few thousand feet away?

The guy pointing it must have steady hands, and damn good vision.

Re:Questioning this...

[djtripp]

Easy, magic laser. Much like the magic bullet and the magic loogie.

Re:Questioning this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe they used one of those new fangled things called a COMPUTER to do the tracking.

Re:Questioning this...

[LurkerXXX]

They didn't shine it at a plane directly overhead, the pointed it at a plane a few miles away. At that distance, even at an altitude of a few thousand feet, the pilots still have a clear line of site to the ground. The could be hit much closer if the incoming beam was slighly angled to come in from the front side and not straight ahead over the center of the nose.

Re:Questioning this...

[Mistlefoot]

A few thousand feet?

8,500 feet straight up is more than a few thousand feet at enough of an angle that you could be in line of site of the pilot.

I strongly doubt that this was a hand held laser. At about 10,000 feet - 2 miles - that would take a pretty steady hand and damn good eyes.....

Re:Questioning this...

[Lumpy]

ok I DARE you to hold a laser pointer beam on a pencil dot that is 200 feet away.

now I dare you to hold that beam on a basketball that is 1500 feet away. you CAN NOT. it is impossible without special equipment. even a tripod and scope is inaccurate and will jiggle all over hell from ground vibrations. there is no way you can hit an airplane a "few miles away" with anything a consumer can touch.

the only thing useable is gyroscope stabalized laser aiming systems. and those are not common, cheap or easy to get.

There is one way I could nail a plane very brefily with a laser. a 12 inch dobsonian telescope with the laser perfectly aligned to correspond with the crosshairs of a guide eyepiece and at least 1 watt or more and perfeclty collimated for that distance.

now tell me where I can get a very light 1 watt laser with military grade collimation...

Re:Questioning this...

[temojen]

now tell me where I can get a very light 1 watt laser with military grade collimation...

Here you go. There's plans in that book for a pulsed CO2 laser that'll cut steel. It's probably more than 1 watt and the capacitor bank isn't very light, but the quartz tube should be light enough to mount on your telescope mount if you've got one heavy enough to stabilize that telescope.

Re:Questioning this...

[LurkerXXX]

I'm assuming the laser used was a large one, not some little pencil laser. A large one could easily be set up on a bipod or tripod mount (think of rifles or large caliber guns on mounts). Sharpshooters can hit things at extreme distance when their guns are properly braced. Snipers have taken out individual people with bullets at well over a miles distance. The cockpit is a lot larger target than a single human, plus at several miles the laser beam is going to spread a lot and be a LOT wider than a bullet.

Ever look at a plane several miles away that is coming straight or almost straight in your direction? Sometimes it seems like they aren't moving at all. The number of arc seconds they will move in 10 seconds time relative to you is very small. I don't think a gyroscope/mechanical tracker would be necessary.

Re:Questioning this...

[St. Arbirix]

Like the Cleveland article said...
Hawk said the laser had to have been fairly sophisticated to track a plane traveling at that altitude.

Am I the only one that has used a green laser for a legitimate purpose? Interestingly enough, that legitimate purpose (which seems to be one of two *only* legitimate purposes) seems to be the only way to carry out such a damaging illegitimate use which is what must have happened here... Someone strapped the laser to the side of a telescope! I do it so that I can use the green light to point at a spot in the sky and then not have to fiddle about finding that spot through the scope. It's just a matter of getting a plane in your sight and turning a knob to keep it locked in (funny that the DMCA can prevent me from telling you how to get around a copyright protection mechanism but I can't be touched for describing how to blind a pilot flying at 8,500 feet).

The other legitimate purpose I mentioned has to do with Pink Floyd and a fog machine... which once again can immediately lead to illegitimate activities.

Re:Questioning this...

[LurkerXXX]

Some folks have pretty steady hands and damn good eyes. Especially when braced or using a tripod/bipod. The world record sniper kill shot...

http://www.snipercountry.com/Articles/KillingShot_ 2430Metres.asp

2,430 metres. Ok, so it's only been done once at that distance but think...

The distance away these bad guys that had the laser were was probably 10x what the sniper was. But the sniper shot a man. The laser only had to hit the cockpit which probably has 10x the cross section of a man. No difference there. Even so far.

The sniper had to worry about wind. Wind for over a miles distance, even if it's light at the near end, a breeze could be kicking up at the far end. Then there's the drop of the bullet from gravity over that distance. Lots of problems that all go away when you are talking about lasers, so the laser shot is a *LOT* easier.

The sniper had to hit the target with a (relatively) tiny .50 caliber bullet. The laser beam was probably very wide after traveling several miles. I dont' know what kind of laser was used, but one poster mentioned ' my 2.5' long argon tube beam ends up 1' or more wide at a distance of only 1000 feet or so.' The beam of whatever kind of laser it was could have been extremely wide after several miles. Much easier to hit the target.

The plane was moving, but at several miles away, if it was moving directly (or close to) at the laser, the number of arc seconds it would move relative to the bad guys would be very few in only 10 seconds or so. Somewhat harder to hit the target, but very doable.

Re:Questioning this...

[Tony-A]

there is no way you can hit an airplane a "few miles away" with anything a consumer can touch.

Seems like people have been signalling airplanes and ships with small hand-held mirrors for a long time. Just a brief flash of light is all that's required.

Re:Questioning this...

[vadim_t]

Think of what you said for a little.

A 747 flies at 565 mph or 909 km/h. This is 252 meters *per second*. And as you said, from the ground you barely see it move. You can't just point to it, since a second later your aim will be 252 meters off if you were right under it. Of course really it'd be slower for you due to the angle, but we can assume that the plane isn't at your altitude flying right at you, which is about the only thing that would make cheap aiming possible. The pilot will probably not even notice the laser even if you managed to shine it right into the eye for the tiny fraction of a second it'd be pointing at it.

You need one heck of a system that can to two things. The first one is to aim precisely. That alone would be quite difficult, since it'll need to be capable of making really tiny and precise adjustments. The second one is that it needs some kind of very precise system that would keep it pointing to a moving target. The minimum would be some kind of very good motorized telescope mount, controlled by a computer.

Now, the beam spreading. If your beam spreads noticeably, then it will lose a lot of power by the time it gets to the plane. First of all you have the atmosphere, with all the air and crap floating in it. Second, as the beam spreads it will become a lot less powerful. If the radius of the laser beam doubles, the area becomes 4 times larger. Either your laser has to be insanely powerful to overcome this, or you have to have an insanely good mount and tracking system. And neither of those things looks cheap, easy to get, or move around.

Finally, if did somehow managed to do all of this, wouldn't it be a lot easier to pay some dumb islamic terrorist to shoot it with a rocket? Surely that would be a lot cheaper, less trouble, and less dangerous for you.

Re:Questioning this...

[LurkerXXX]

Since neither of us know the type of laser used, we don't know what the beam spread would be at several miles distance. Nor do we know the power output of the laser, so neither of us can tell how intense it would be at that distance.

I wouldn't want to stare straight into a 4000W industrial laser even if I was 5 miles away and it's beem was 5' wide. At 5 feet wide that beam is going to be about as intense as a 15mW laser beam thats .25 inches wide. Ever stare stright into a laser pointer for 10 seconds or so? You might have a rough time seeing for the next few minutes.

Remember, you don't have to permanantly damage the pilots eyes, you just have to temporarily blind him. Even being blind for just a few minutes could be terrible if he was coming in for a landing, or in an area with a lot of other air traffic. Ever have an especially bright flashbulb go off in your face? It won't do any permanent damage, but it can certainly make things hard to see for a minutes or two. Especially at night when your eyes need to be attuned to a darker environment.

Re:Questioning this...

[Zeinfeld]

How can a laser beam travel round the nose of a plane overhead, and accurately reach the pilot's eyes from say, a few thousand feet away?

The first thing to consider is what the local terain looks like. It is going to be a lot easier doing something like this if you are in an area with high buildings or hills in the line of sight.

Second thing to consider is how to minimize the effect of the plane's velocity, if the plane is heading directly towards you this type of trick is going to be much easier than if you are perpendicular to the direction of travel.

Third, what did the pilots really experience? Most likely they saw an unexplained light in the cockpit and assumed it was a laser comming from the outside. They could be wrong. The eyesight damage statistics are completely untrustworthy and are probably best ignored.

Fourth, is the objective to hit the cockpit or just the plane? if there is a bunck of geeks doing this type of thing on a large scale they will hit the cockpit every so often by accident. Another possibility is that the laser is just scanning at random without being targetted.

It could be post 9/11 paranoia or it could be Al Qaeda, or even a bunch of racist redneck fruitcakes like Timothy McVeigh. It would not take a great deal of expertise to put together somthing that could do a degree of tracking. Take one of the telescopes that has a CCD drop in and a computer drive. You can buy that type of thing for a few hundred dollars.

The objective here may just be to test a tracking system, not to bring down the plane, or if it is Al Qaeda the target is more likely to be a helicopter.

Re:Questioning this...

[Feanturi]

I'm not trying to say that terrorists could and would be able to pull this off, but are all airports surrounded by totally flat ground for hundreds of feet in all directions? I don't know, that's why I ask. I ask because, people seem to be believing that this attack would be taking place from the ground, and I wonder why that would have to be the case. I've got two airports here, one is way on the edge of town and surrounded by pretty much nothing. The other one is in the middle of the city, it's not used much anymore, but there are plenty of tallish buildings in the area. The hospital even got hit one day by a small plane making its approach a bit too low. There are plenty of other problems with aiming a laser accurately into the cockpit of a moving plane, but I don't think that relative elevation needs to be one of them. As for vision and steady hands, why not a sniper rifle on a tripod mount, with a high-powered scope?

Mind you, one could just try to put a bullet in the pilot's head if they were going to go to the trouble of setting that up.

Re:Questioning this...

[LurkerXXX]

You certainly aren't going to be 252 meters off each second at the angle you are at. You aren't aiming at a plane directly overhead. You are aiming at one a long distance away that is coming toward you.

Besides that, the plane in Cleveland probably wasn't going anywhere near 565 mph. It was 14 miles from the airport and likely slowing in the more crowded airspace and preparing for landing. It it was also probably on a slow descent for landing. Once again decreasing the angle of change that the bad guys had to use.

You can probably smuggle an industrial laser easier than you can a ground to air rocket launcher. A piece of industrial hardware looks like it will be used for... some industrial thing. A rocket launcher kind of stands out more to border inspectors.

When the terrorist launches the rocket in a cloud of smoke noise with a warhead shooting into the sky, someone is also likely to see them launch it and they would very likely be caught. If someone sees you point bulky industrial thing up in one end they probably aren't going to think a lot of it. I doubt the FBI gets a call every time someone is seen working with bulky equipment.

Re:Questioning this...

[vadim_t]

Yup, won't be 252 metres per second. But let's see what we get with different angles. Hope I'm not screwing up anything, it's late here.

45 degrees: 252 * sin(pi/4) = 178.19
20 degrees: 86.18
10 degrees: 43.75
5 degrees: 21.96

I'd say it's pretty hard to get an angle that lets you aim easily. There are other problems I forgot to mention. Suppose you shine a nice green laser. While lasers are normally not visible as a beam, over that distance and with that power it could very well trace a nice green line right to you. The pilot could also get a very good idea of your location.

The other option is to use an invisible laser, in which case you need equipment that lets you see it, and it makes thing even more difficult. A weak visible laser could be enough to scare the pilot. An infrared one will have to pretty much fry the retina, and you'll have to point that right into the eye for it to work.

And in any case, if the objective is terrorism I don't really see why would somebody go with such a complicated plan. IIRC, the kind of thing ETA does here in Spain is to plant a bomb in front of a big commercial center, then *call the police* and I suppose then (expeletive deleted) safely sit in front of the TV and watch the evacuation of several thousand people. Stolen car, some explosives from their reserve, tried strategy, guaranteed panic even if nobody gets hurt.

Re:Questioning this...

[theLOUDroom]

I'm assuming the laser used was a large one, not some little pencil laser. A large one could easily be set up on a bipod or tripod mount (think of rifles or large caliber guns on mounts). Sharpshooters can hit things at extreme distance when their guns are properly braced. Snipers have taken out individual people with bullets at well over a miles distance.

Which makes the obvious point:
Why the hell are you going to bother producing a one-of-a-kind "laser rifle" that *MIGHT* blind a pilot when you could just shoot them with an actual rifle?

This article is just another bunch of paranoid "homeland security" bullshit.

Ever look at a plane several miles away that is coming straight or almost straight in your direction? Sometimes it seems like they aren't moving at all. The number of arc seconds they will move in 10 seconds time relative to you is very small. I don't think a gyroscope/mechanical tracker would be necessary.

It's not a question of "arc seconds" it's a question of precision.
Ever try to actually do the math?

Say you want to hit a 5mm target with a 10mm beam from 2km away, that means you need a precision of 2.5 × 10E-09 radians! That's fucking accurate. It's just not something that you're going to be able to build in your garage. There are probably some NASA guys and few spy satellite engineers who might be able to make it happen, but with that level of talent, you may as well just make your own stinger missile.

Re:Questioning this...

[mortonda]

The sniper had to hit the target with a (relatively) tiny .50 caliber bullet.

I'm no expert on this, but isn't it a violation of the Geneva convention to use .50 cal weapons on human target with a sniper rifle?

Re:Questioning this...

[LurkerXXX]

Why the hell are you going to bother producing a one-of-a-kind "laser rifle" that *MIGHT* blind a pilot when you could just shoot them with an actual rifle?

I dont want to build a super fancy one-of-a-kind laser rifle. I'm saying they could just take an industrial laser, mount one end on a bipod/tripod and mount a high power sniper scope on it. Not exactly the type of engineering you need NASA for. A good 'ol boy could do it in an afternoon if he could get his hands on a high power industrial laser.

Say you want to hit a 5mm target with a 10mm beam

But you don't want such a tiny beam, and you aren't aiming at such a tiny target.

You don't want a 10mm beam. You want a high power industrial laser that can put out a beam that will still temporarily blind somone when the beam is 5 feet wide. GE will be glad to sell you one powerful enough if you've got the bucks. And you won't be shining it at a 5mm target (the pupil of one eye of one pilot). You will be bathing the whole cockpit with that 5 foot wide beam so that you get both eyes of the pilot, and both eyes of the copilot. The cockpit is a lot bigger than 5 mm.

Now do the math and compare that to a sniper hitting a 12 inch wide target with a .50 caliber bullet at a miles distance. Realise also that the laser won't have probems with windage, drop of the bullet due to gravity, or variations in speed of the bullet by how many grains of gunpower are packed into the cartridge. No NASA boys required. Just a good sharpshooter.

Re:Questioning this...

[mr_death]

A 747 does cruise around 565 mph at altitude. However, regulations and controllers require a slower speed while approaching an airport.

First, there is a speed limit of 250 kts (~287 mph) below 10000 feet.

Second, when closer to an airport, a controller will often slow down an aircraft for spacing reasons. 210 kts and 180 kts are favorite speed restrictions for controllers here in the Seattle area.

If memory serves, 160 kts is a target airspeed for a 747 on short final; smaller aircraft can usually go slower.

As others have pointed out, a laser-wielding bad guy could position himself somewhat in front of the path of the aircraft to simplify the aiming problem.

In summary, this isn't a trivial problem, but it isn't impossibly hard, either.

Re:Questioning this...

[ipfwadm]

But you don't want such a tiny beam, and you aren't aiming at such a tiny target.

Well, let's say the beam will be 20 feet wide at that distance. I think it's reasonable to assume that the area of the cockpit that needs to be covered is 10 feet wide. Covering a 10ft target with a 20ft beam is identical to covering a 5mm target with a 10mm beam, so the required precision quoted by the original poster will remain the same (whether or not the quoted precision is correct is another matter; I didn't check the math). Making the beam smaller will require even more precision.

GE will be glad to sell you one powerful enough if you've got the bucks.

I don't imagine GE sells many of these lasers. Therefore I think they'd be pretty easy to track, especially since at least two must have been purchased -- the events happened in two cities 2,000 miles apart more or less simultaneously.

Now do the math and compare that to a sniper hitting a 12 inch wide target with a .50 caliber bullet at a miles distance.

In every post of yours I've seen (and I've seen a lot thus far) you've brought up the sniper. The sniper kill from ~2500m away has been done ONCE (and the previous record was 25 or 30 years old), by a highly trained individual with a lot of practice. Yes, the laser is easier than the gun, but we're dealing with a longer distance, less trained individuals, a larger but MUCH faster-moving target, and something that has supposedly been repeated multiple times over the last few days. While I don't think it's impossible, it's certainly suspect.

Re:Questioning this...

[ipfwadm]

From the linked article:

the Boeing 737 rolled to the right and pitched nose down into the ground [in Colorado Springs]
and
a 737 dove nose-first to the ground outside Pittsburgh

One would hope that a pilot's response to being blinded by a laser is NOT to point the plane at the ground. Pulling up is a far more optimal solution. I also find it unlikely that a pilot would be blinded and not say anything to air traffic control before crashing the plane, especially since the controller is the only one that could talk him through aborting the landing and guiding the plane safely through traffic while he can't see (that and radio silence is certainly out of the ordinary -- they chatter on the ATC frequency more than teenage girls at a slumber party).

Re:Questioning this...

[LurkerXXX]

Well, let's say the beam will be 20 feet wide at that distance. I think it's reasonable to assume that the area of the cockpit that needs to be covered is 10 feet wide. Covering a 10ft target with a 20ft beam is identical to covering a 5mm target with a 10mm beam, so the required precision quoted by the original poster will remain the same

What??? The ratio of beam/target sizes are the same. That has nothing to do with the precision needed. You are shooting at a target 2 miles away from you. In the original poster's quote, if your aim is off by more than just 5 mm in any direction you miss the target. With the numbers you just gave you could be off center by up to 10 feet and still hit it. That's a HUGE difference in precision.

GE is hardly the only maker of high power lasers. There are many in the world. You can also build your own if you want to put the effort into it.

Sorry if you don't like the sniper stuff. It was an extreme to make the point. One of the earlier posters in the thread 'dared' me to hold a laser beam on a basketball 1500 feet away. My point was that sharpshooters can hit a target that size at that distance with no problem. Here are some sharpshooter contest results. Notice the nice groupings they can make in the 3" and 6" rings from 1000 yards away. With lasers and no windage/drop/grain-variation their accuracy would be even more phenominal.

Re:Questioning this...

[ipfwadm]

Think of what you would instinctively do if your eyes were being boiled by a laser weapon while flying around at low altitude (near the airports).

Umm, probably not push down on the control stick. Maybe put my hands over my eyes. It's not like this is the first time these guys were ever at the controls of a plane. Pilots receive plenty of training. I'm sure those that make it to the level of flying big airliners know that putting the plane into a nosedive when near the ground is not a good idea.

Also, the idea that two planes were successfully crashed with this laser technique without anyone ever having heard of it until now is a little far-fetched -- it is highly unlikely that there were no failures that other pilots noticed, especially given the apparent lack of success with the recent attempts.

As for other potential causes, well, who knows. Planes are pretty complex. Pick a system that could malfunction. It's amazing there aren't more problems than there are. I know that if my company made planes, I'd never fly.

Re:Questioning this...

[theLOUDroom]

But you don't want such a tiny beam, and you aren't aiming at such a tiny target.

Wrong.

You want a tiny beam because, the more your spread out you beam, the more you spread out your power. You could take a 100mW laser and make it 10ft wide, but the power level would no longer be large enough to do damage. And NO, GE is not going to sell you a multi-megawatt 5ft diameter beam laser without calling a few gov't agencies. And, they're going to want to know how you're going to come up with the 7 or more figures something like that is going to cost. Something like that is NOT an off the shelf product, nor would it be light enough for a typical tripod.

And...
Your target IS that tiny because you're trying to hit someone in the eye!

No NASA boys required. Just a good sharpshooter.

Have you ever even fired a gun? You're really overestimating how easy this is. You speak as if being able to hit a target a mile away is the norm. And you're forgetting the fact that the airplane is moving at a couple hundred miles per hour. Know any sharpshooters who can shoot the eye out of a cheetah in full sprint at a mile away?

Whoever the guy is that's making this shot unassisted, he's the frickin mac daddy of all sharpshooters. You might want to check out the NRA records page to get even a small clue about how hard what you're suggesting is. There's a reason people hunt foul with a shotgun instead of a .22 rifle.

Re:Questioning this...

[alienmole]

Others have already pointed out that your speed estimates are way off. Planes don't land at their cruising speed! The aiming isn't an issue here.

As for lasers tracing a line, I've shone huge green lasers on clouds, when I worked with entertainment lasers. These were the kind that required watercooling, and would require at least a panel van to house them. If visibility is good (no mist or smoke), they don't trace a line that can be seen from any distance. For a few seconds, there's no way the pilot would get a fix - besides, the last thing he'd want to be doing is looking directly towards the source of the beam.

Also, a laser that powerful doesn't need to be pointed right into the eye - read up about laser safety, just being exposed to a small part of the beam for a very short time can do it. In short, this is very doable without major equipment, other than the laser itself, and a way to point it with a sight.

As for the objective, that's a separate question. Some terrorists use shoe bombs, others use anthrax; or you get criminals who go around shooting people from a specially constructed bay in their station wagon, just for kicks (which happened here a few years back). This laser business is about as easy and untraceable a way as you could possible find to interfere with a landing plane.

Re:Questioning this...

[alienmole]

Read Why a 1 mW Helium-Neon Laser Still Appears Bright a Mile Away and the surrounding text to get an idea of why this is not FUD. A powerful laser projecting a 4-foot spot into the cockpit would easily hit a pilot, and easily blind them.

Re:Questioning this...

[Vulcann]

The guy pointing it must have steady hands, and damn good vision...

And must be strong with the Force.

Re:Questioning this...

[Captain_Chaos]

... Someone strapped the laser to the side of a telescope! I do it so that I can use the green light to point at a spot in the sky and then not have to fiddle about finding that spot through the scope. ...

Well then perhaps it was you who was (inadvertently, I'm sure) the cause of these reports?

Re:Questioning this...

[St. Arbirix]

Alzheimers occurs late in life; before the 20th century, the vast majority of people didn't live long enough to get it, whether or not they played Go.

A) Not true. Infant mortality rates were atrocious which put the average age down rather low. If you could get past your childhood years you could live quit a while.
B) Today there are several thousand professional players. The rate of Alzheimers is at least 5%. A good portion of the pro players are well into their years and yet there are no cases of Alzheimers or senile dementia among the group.

It's symptoms were simply considered to be general old age 'senility.'

Go has been proven to reverse the effects of senile dementia. And pretty recently too.

I very much doubt you have formal records to back up your statement.

1612 was used because that's how far back formal records of Go playing in Japan go. It's an official state game, they keep pretty good track.

CORRELATION != CAUSATION

Go has been show to literally reverse the effects of senile dementia. Like, they sat down a group of people getting it, taught them Go (only about 2 rules in the game yet miles more complex than chess) and they no longer were getting senile dementia.

True, quit literally it is not Go that stops mental illnesses. It's using both halves of your head that do it which is why chess players get Alzheimers and Go players don't. Look up Bridge and Alzheimers and you should find plenty of stuff showing Bridge stops it too.

Check this out, it's referenced with links.

tracking moving plane?

[AmigaAvenger]

here is my question.

it has been mentioned and it is obviously required that the laser track the cockpit. exactly how has the technology to track the COCKPIT of an airliner moving 200+mph. (pilots mention a constant laser light for 10+ seconds)

tracking the plane is one thing, and even that is tough to do if you are talking laser accuracy, but the cockpit? also, this has to be done several miles out, since the cockpit windows don't have much downward view anyway.

outside of military technology, are there any commercial systems that could even do this?

Re:tracking moving plane?

[CdBee]

It does have the ring of "post-Sep-11th-paranoia" about it, doesn't it?

Re:tracking moving plane?

[Moofie]

If you're standing on the axis of the runway the airplane is landing on, it's not that big of a problem.

Re:tracking moving plane?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although in that situation you might have a problem when you blind the pilot and he crashes on you.

Re:tracking moving plane?

[Moofie]

Go to the other end of the runway. Problem solved.

Re:tracking moving plane?

[bombadillo]

This is exactly what I have been wondering. You would need some sort of computer assisted device. 20+ years of Star Wars research can't hit a target the size of a ballistic missle. I am pretty sceptical that any one could repeatedly hit inside a cockpit window of an airplane and at the right angle to hit the pilots eyes. Also, a good number of planes land on Auto pilot. this doesn't seem like a very exact way to terrorize people. It sounds more like some pranksters with a laser gun that get a few lucky shots at landing planes. Disturbingly enough Fox news said that one day terrorists could have laser technology that could pierce a planes hull. Unbelievable.....

Re:tracking moving plane?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are quite wrong.
First, the laser may diverge to a radius of 1m at a distance of a kilometer, and still be dangerously powerful.
Second, aim a tripod mounted, um, telescope at an aircraft. It's quite easy to track it considering that the aircraft is several kilometers away. Also note that the aircraft is not moving perpendicular to your line of sight, but rather relatively parallel to it.

Once you get some practice with a telescope, mount a powerful laser to it, then calibrate it precisely such that the laser and the telescope crosshair will converge at the desired distance. After some trials, you can go to the airport and ask the pilots if they saw your laser.

Re:tracking moving plane?

[LiquidCoooled]

The first article mentions the beam inside the cockpit at 8500 feet.

Authorities are investigating a mysterious laser beam that was directed into the cockpit of a commercial jet traveling at more than 8,500 feet.

You can't physically SEE the cockpit with a telescope or laser from that height unless the plane is banking?

I can see 100% the danger during approach, but the high altitude one seems a bit strange.

As for accuracy, test it out yourself - hold your arm out and follow a moving plane - its not all that difficult, and I imagine some counterstrike playing kid could just hold a laser up and say "look im shining on the plane" without realising he's been noticed by the flightcrew.

I personally don't think there is a high tech aiming device in use here - it would be too easy to locate and identify, besides at 8500 feet, what could they hope to achieve? Its not at all like final approach where every second does count.

Re:tracking moving plane?

[NanoGator]

"tracking the plane is one thing, and even that is tough to do if you are talking laser accuracy, but the cockpit? also, this has to be done several miles out, since the cockpit windows don't have much downward view anyway."

Ever see a laser lightshow? Why couldn't a vibrating mirror be used to widen the beam and make the plane and cockpit a lot easier to hit?

Re:tracking moving plane?

[Michael Spencer Jr.]

Sure.

I own a Sony Handycam (DCR-TRV260) with a 40x optical zoom (and a useless "990x digital zoom" which really just enlarges existing pixels and adds no new detail). I also own a Bogen tripod with a fluid head. (Professional tripods are usually sold with legs and head separate. I have these legs: http://www.bogenimaging.us/product/templates/templ ates.php3?sectionid=102&itemid=823 and this head: http://www.bogenimaging.us/product/templates/templ ates.php3?sectionid=9&itemid=287 )

I would never do anything like this in real life, but it would be possible for me to somehow strap a laser pointer onto my camcorder. I would then need to stand my tripod up securely and calibrate it, so the laser points at the exact middle of the image. I could do this by just pointing the whole thing at a wall, zooming in, and then fine-tuning the laser aim until it shows in the middle of my viewfinder. I could then do the same thing for a distant object, like the wall of a house several blocks away, and fine-tune the laser aim even more until the point was in the middle of the viewfinder.

Keep in mind the whole point of a fluid tripod head is to give the operator fine pressure-sensitive control of where the camera is pointing. There are no rubber pads pushed up against metal, seizing the metal and making fine movement impossible. Fluid heads use oil cartridges and tension knobs that let you tighten or loosen, but never completely lock, the horizontal or vertical movement. If you zoom a camera way in, tighten the tension knobs, and just lay one finger on the tripod pan handle, you can see the camera v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y tracking. To an outside observer you can't even tell the camera is moving, but the viewfinder shows the camera is not only moving, but it's moving smoothly at a constant rate.

While someone with my rig could just barely track a fast-moving aircraft from far away, they *could* do it.

--Michael Spencer

Re:tracking moving plane?

[b2designer]

As much as I would hate to agree with Fox's fear mongering, this would be much easier than it seems ad it could be done with off theshelf technology.

CO2 lasers are powerfull enough to cut through the skin of an aircraft at several kilometers given the appropriate optics. I shouldn't say much more than that.

I have actually heard a first hand account of a tree being cut down at roughly a kilometer in Palo Alto by slightly drunk laser engineers.

Re:tracking moving plane?

[falken0905]

Who said the beams came from the ground? And who said the operators were human? If 'The Day The Earth Stood Still' had been in color, you would have clearly seen that Klaatu and Gort's laser beams were green .

Re:tracking moving plane?

[Goldenhawk]

Oh, please. Take off the tinfoil hat.

>You would need some sort of computer assisted device. 20+
>years of Star Wars research can't hit a target the size of a
>ballistic missle.

First of all, in 20 plus years of research, we HAVE demonstrated the ability to accurately target a missile. Enough to blow a few out of the sky. Second, we've done that from a 747 in flight at high altitude, not just a stable base placed on the ground. For crying out loud, we can repeatedly hit a precise spot on the MOON from the ground. Computer assist? Nah, just a good telescope with a bore-scoped laser.

Bear in mind that most airports have a very repeatable approach path - the planes come in within a few hundred yards of the same point in the sky, one every couple minutes, all day long. It's not that hard to get things lined up and try again and again until you get just one good shot.

After all, as Bush and Rumsfeld have said quite a few times, all the terrorists have to do is get it right once.

Re:tracking moving plane?

[Feanturi]

Why would you be aiming the laser at the plane with the beam oriented perpendicular to the plane's path, as you seem to imply? I wouldn't even try to aim at a *passing* plane. But if the laser is shining from straight ahead of the plane, in its path, the plane will not be moving very much at all relative to the beam. It would jiggle a bit, but that would be all.

Re:tracking moving plane?

[clone22]

If gullible were a word I might agree with you.

Re:tracking moving plane?

[vashathastampedo]

If you were positioned directly in line with the runway, it would seem that getting a laser to "track" an object that is doing its best to stay as straight and even as possible would not be that difficult.

Re:tracking moving plane?

[NanoGator]

"Because then the power of the laser would be greatly reduced."

Fair enough. Just add more power. No need for complex moving gizmos, just an oscillating mirror and lotsa juice.

Re:tracking moving plane?

[ipfwadm]

If gullible were a word I might agree with you.

Umm, maybe you'd better take a trip to your favorite dictionary.

From Merriam-Webster:

Main Entry: gullible
Variant(s): also gullable /'g&-l&-b&l/
Function: adjective
: easily duped or cheated

Re:tracking moving plane?

[asb]

exactly how has the technology to track the COCKPIT of an airliner moving 200+mph. (pilots mention a constant laser light for 10+ seconds)

You were blinded by the big number. The real question is about angular velocity. The further the object is, the smaller the angular velocity gets.

Re:tracking moving plane?

[TopShelf]

Somebody mod this up. Everyone else seems to be caught in comparisons with a sniper shooting a bullet at a speeding cheetah, when in fact the similarities are few and far between...

Re:tracking moving plane?

[stevejobsjr]

Good job proving his point.

Re:tracking moving plane?

[bombadillo]

A week later and they have charged some prankster for shining lasor beams. Now do you see the ridiculous fear mongering.

Re:tracking moving plane?

[bombadillo]

A week later and they have charged some prankster for shining lasor beams. Now do you see the ridiculous fear mongering. I understand that very powerful lasers do exist. However, a powerful laser requires a powerful sources. If terrorists are able to sneak a huge laser into this country and haul it around the country undetected then they would have better technology then us. Lets look at this realisticly.

Re:tracking moving plane?

[b2designer]

I don't want to say much about this. I don't want to even chance giving anyone an idea. I am a laser engineer. This is not advanced technology. This can be bought off the shelf. No background check. The power source can easily be rigged to fit inside your average van with the laser unit.

Accuracy?

[Nine Tenths of The W]

What are the chances of someone being able to even hit the cockpit, let alone the pilot's eyes with a commercial laser pointer from 300m+(ballpark figure, but they'd have to stay hidden) against a moving plane?

Re:Accuracy?

[harlows_monkeys]

What are the chances of someone being able to even hit the cockpit, let alone the pilot's eyes with a commercial laser pointer from 300m+(ballpark figure, but they'd have to stay hidden) against a moving plane?

Take a coin, flip it 100 times, and record the sequence of heads and tails. What were the chances of getting that sequence? 1 in 2^100. Yet...you got it!

You are implicitly assuming that they hit the cockpit of the first plane they tried, on the first attempt, and hit it at exactly the time they wished. Of course that would be ridiculously hard to do.

However, since failures won't be detectable, they could have been trying this for a year with each plane that flew by, and finally managed to hit one.

Re:Accuracy?

[Conspir8or]

It's not impossible. I used to target Womp Rats in my T-16 back home. They're not much bigger than two meters.

Countermeasures

[GrAfFiT]

Put some computer-controlled pan-tilted 1000mw lasers on the plane and the runway.
Maybe some windows 98 operated computers will get mad and transform the runway in some Starwars style battlefield.
That would be a lot of fun !

Re: Countermeasures

[Black Parrot]

> Put some computer-controlled pan-tilted 1000mw lasers on the plane and the runway.

Cheaper to just have the pilots wear blindfolds.

Re:Countermeasures

[Bagels]

Make sure that ours are red and theirs are green, though.

Regulation

[Thunderstruck]

Perhaps public misperception can eventually make lasers easier to obtain and more widely produced rather than regulated to the point of inaccessability.

1. People think the lasers are weapons.
2. Other people start selling lasers as weapons.
3. Weapons are constitutionally protected for civilian ownership in all civilized nations.
4. Ergo - the Lasers can be purchased at your local sporting-goods store after a background check and some paperwork.

(Author's note, Point #3 is intended to be a bit of a joke. But I expect at least one reader will not read all the way to this disclaimer, instead flaming me good and hard.)

Re:Regulation

[JesseL]

Just FYI for people that may respond to point #3:
http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/secondamendment2.htm

Re:Regulation

[511pf]

You can take my laser from my cold dead...blah blah blah...

It's people. Soylent Green is made out of people.

Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape.

Re:Regulation

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

(Author's note, Point #3 is intended to be a bit of a joke. But I expect at least one reader will not read all the way to this disclaimer, instead flaming me good and hard.)

Reader's note, If you have to put an a disclaimer on your humor, it ain't funny. If you aren't willing to encourage the misdirection of good, hard flaming, then you shouldn't be writing it in the first place.

Re:Regulation

[LaCosaNostradamus]

It is almost the easiest thing imaginable in American politics, to take such a thing as a laser weapon and totally reclassify it out of civilian hands. Still, civilians can own things like automatic weapons, even strongly "weapon of war" types like Gatling guns, as long as they follow a bunch of rigmarole regulation ... so perhaps civilians will be "allowed" to own clear laser weaponry.

Re:I don't get it

[bfizzle]

Don't worry. They are just testing out the new satelites equiped to shoot down terrorist planes.. ooops I mean ICBM missles.

Re:Dupe!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

"115 thousand people died, and you only care about a fucking laser beam? you stupid morons."

I don't think you realize how bad it is -- lots of people actually believe that population needed to be thinned out anyway. It does not help that most Indonesians are muslims, either. You would not believe some of the crap I heard on 12/26.

When green lasers are outlawed, only outlaws will&

[jspoon]

You'll take my green lasers when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers.

Paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you

[redwoodtree]

Given the complexity of tracking a jet plane and the angles involved in getting a beam into a cockpit, one of the most likely conclusions is that this in fact is a malicious threat. It sounds pretty paranoid but heck, someone has obviously gone to some trouble to setup a mechanism that can track a rapidly moving object in flight. I'm glad the FBI is investigating because I fly almost every month and the last thing I want is to wind up in a plane with a blind cabin crew.

What about...

[ASayre8]

One way mirrors on the cockpit windows? Let the Lasers just

Burning through cups.

[Zarks]

Here is an expample of how powerfull those lasers can be:http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtorrone/2622866/

Burning through a plastic cup is a lot differant from taking down a plane though. IMO it shows how security paranoid people are nowerdays.

Re:Burning through cups.

[SupremeTaco]

It's not so much burning through a cup that scares people, but maybe burning through a cornea or retina. Trust me, pilots are PARANOID about their eyes.

Yes there are some

[GrAfFiT]

You can easily find computer operated 60w lasers. And yes its beam is 5 inches wide.
That would hurt.

Re:Yes there are some

[rewt66]

Great. Now all you need is to tie the computer controlling the laser into either a radar or optical system that's tracking the plane. I don't think you can get the integrated system off-the-shelf...

And so suddenly this is bigger than just buying, borrowing, or stealing one piece of gear. It turns into a serious project, and therefore shows much more deliberate, long-term malice on the part of the perpetrator.

Re:Yes there are some

[bfizzle]

????

But they are still easy to get. So why the hype to stop selling little mW lasers that don't aren't computer operated?

Re:Yes there are some

[inject_hotmail.com]

I don't think you can get the integrated system off-the-shelf...

Yes you can. He works for Osama and he owns an old VW van, an RPG, a few SAMs, and oh, what's this? A $50,000 purchase order to LaserShoppe?

Sure, not open to the public...but open to whom???

Seriously, if there's a guy/chic out there than can hold a laser to an in-flight pilot's eye for longer than 0.003 seconds, the Special Ops team should hire him/her immediately.

I would!

Inject.

Re:Yes there are some

[clone22]

The plane can do the tracking for you. If it's on final approach it will track the glideslope under computer control, so you would just need to correlate the vertical alignment once you get it pointed down the runway. Still sounds like a difficult thing to accomplish given the distance.

Add "goggles on" to your pre-landing checklist, just in case.

Re:Yes there are some

[dasunt]

You can easily find computer operated 60w lasers. And yes its beam is 5 inches wide.

I don't believe that will work. First, in the picture you shown, the beam is already diffusing over the distance shown. The plane was 8500 feet above ground. Even assuming the laser was pointed straight up, I would assume that the beam had diffused by that time.

Speaking of 8500 feet, if the laser was pointed straight up at the plane (lets assume a glass bottomed cockpit), that laser would have to accurate to within +/-.15 degrees to hit a 50' wide cockpit. That's the shortest distance to the plane.

Just to add to the complexity of this feat, the plane was moving. Googling, I find that the approach speed for a landing 747 is (at the low end) 120mph. If my math is right, that's about 170 feet a second!

Now you need a high-powered laser (one that can travel several miles without diffusing) that can be calibrated within a small fraction of a degree and can track an object that moves 170 feet a second, or a little over 1 degree a second.

If you aren't shooting light into a glass-bottomed cockpit, but from, say, 5 miles away, then the plane's angle, relative to you, changes less. Your laser has to be more accurate though: About +/-.05 degrees if MS calc is to be believed. That doesn't stop the plane from being a moving target though, you'll still need tracking software and damn accurate motors to reposition the laser.

This story is very odd, especially with its lack of details. Something isn't right here.

Why green?

[maunleon]

Can someone who is more familiar with lasers and the associated physics explain why green? What type of laser would this indicate?

Re:Why green?

[telemonster]

Green appears the brightest on the human spectrum. Most of these small lasers are DPSS (Diode pumped solid state). If the beam is coherent it is *INDEED* a danger, and nothing scares me more than the thought of hoodlums running around with 600mw "laser pointers".

Lasers for display are regulated by the Center for Disease and Radiological Health. Your not supposed to direct a laser above 5mw up into the sky.

At a long distance, the beam definitly becomes incoherent. Gas lasers are considered better than solid state in regards to beam colimation, and without optics my 2.5' long argon tube beam ends up 1' or more wide at a distance of only 1000 feet or so.

Targeting, no... Someone might manage to cross the planes path, but in order to track a plane I'd iamgine you would need to build a box filled with dirt sitting on innertubes to isolate vibration, then come up with a servo mechanism. I don't think 16 bit DACs would give enough accuracy with glavos.

Weapons targeting systems do not use visible lasers AFAIK. It would be a giveaway if there was a bright green dot on the target and a green line tracing back to the source.

Also, laser light is different then searchlights because the light is polarized. So you can see the beam better from one way versus the other.

Re:Why green?

[ArticleI]

Compared to a red laser with a wavelength of about 630-650 nm, green lasers have a wavelength of about 530 nm. 532 nm seems to be common.

Re:Why green?

[temojen]

I don't think 16 bit DACs would give enough accuracy with glavos.

You can get quite a lot of precision with 4 16 bit DACs micro-stepping a stepper motor, especially if you also use a reduction gear.

Re:Why green?

[b2designer]

This could also be an Argon-Ion Laser. These are way more powerfull than a DPSS. It would be difficult to manage the supplies in the field. However, you can dump several Watts down range. The most difficult part of this would be a low cost system that is collimated at several kilometers. Even lab quality HeNe lasers can diverge a fractions of a percent per meter. Having worked on things like this, whoever built a device spend several thousand dollars minimum to pull it off.

Re:Why green?

[19thNervousBreakdown]

In Real Life there's dust and water vapor in all air, and a powerful laser does show the whole beam.

Re:Why green?

[angel'o'sphere]

Green usually is a HeNe laser.

Red usually is a ruby laser, but modern low power red lasers are not made from ruby.

Greens is just brighter than red ... the only reason to use one.

angel'o'sphere

Re:Why green?

[Biff Stu]

It's probably a frequency doubled Nd:YAG laser or something similar. YAG stands for Yttrium Aluminum Garnet, a synthetic crystal. The Nd ion is what actually lases, and nowadays, there are several crystals besides YAG that are used for these lasers. It lases in the near infrared, at 1064 nm if it's YAG, or somewhere nearby depending on the crystal that's used. That wavelength just comes from the spectrum of the Nd ion and is dictated by quantum mechanics. Often people want shorter wavelengths. Through the wonders on non-linear optics, the frequency can be doubled to make 532 nm light. That's green.

These lasers are common because this material just happens to be one of the most efficient at turning the electrically generated photons that pump the lasing transition into a coherent laser beam.

There are many varieties of these lasers. There are non-pulsed diode (diode pumped solid-state) or lamp pumped versions, and high peak power pulsed fashlamp pumped versions. It's possible to get over 30 watts (and much more) average power of green out of these things, but such lasers are often big and bulky and suck lots of power. A small 300 mW laser such as the one linked in earlier posts is definitely dangerous at short range. At long range the danger depends on the divergance of the mode and the distance to the target.

As many have pointed out, the difficult part of the problem is steering the beam into the cockpit.

The other issue that confounds me is cost. If you want a high powered laser, you need to be prepared to drop a lot of money. The cost is about the same as a new car, and you can easily spend more. The price, and the fact that they haven't actually blinded anybody, makes me suspect the smaller 300 mW lasers are being used.

Re:Why green?

[St. Arbirix]

Also, laser light is different then searchlights because the light is polarized. So you can see the beam better from one way versus the other.

That makes me curious about what kinds of polarized filters *aren't* on the windshields of planes.

Re:Why green?

[Lehk228]

targeting is not as difficult as people are thinking, rather than track with the laser if you fire the laser roughly opposite or perpendicular to your target and track with a mirror you could do pretty well, either high precision servo motors, or even better stepper motors from a hard drive would be precise enough. Isolating vibration would be a bit tricky but certainly not impossible, hell you could even just choose to ignore vibrations and the laser would still do enough to temporarily blind the pilot.

Re:Why green?

[iamroot]

Most HeNe lasers are definitely red, although some are yellow. (The dot in the first pic is purple/white, since the brightness overexposed the camera. The reflection on the table is much closer to the real color.)

I think the in-counter supermarket checkout scanners often use a HeNe laser.

Green would most likely be a DPSS(the green laser pointers), dye, or YAG laser.

Re:Why green?

[techno-vampire]

Really? You mean that when the USAF uses strong lasars for targetting, they're pinpointing their own positions? I don't think so.

FBI used to investigate UFO sightings as well

[Nine Tenths of The W]

I have no doubt this will prove about as fruitful as their investigation into Bonsai Kitten

Re:FBI used to investigate UFO sightings as well

[bfizzle]

HEHE well I must have missed that /. article

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,41733, 00 .html

Hmm. I dunno.

[valkraider]

This may or may not be a threat. Some interesting thoughts here

But it seems to be that it would be awful hard for something from the ground to actually hit the inside of the cockpit unless it had some sort of tracking device to track the plane, and was high enough to hit the inside of the cockpit instead of the nose cone (perhaps on a tall building or mountain near an airport).

I think this could be another tactic to strike fear into the populace.

Re:Mod Parent Down for this..

[infernow]

The original poster was making a reference to the movie "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery". The relevant portion of the script (copy-pasted from IMDb) follows:

Dr. Evil: You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads! Now evidently my cycloptic colleague informs me that that cannot be done. Ah, would you remind me what I pay you people for, honestly? Throw me a bone here! What do we have?
Number Two: Sea Bass.
Dr. Evil: [pause] Right.
Number Two: They're mutated sea bass.
Dr. Evil: Are they ill tempered?
Number Two: Absolutely.
Dr. Evil: Oh well, that's a start.

Consider yourself enlightened.

Re:When green lasers are outlawed, only outlaws wi

[matth]

Unfortunately, that's the idea.

Re:Mod Parent Down for this..

[Stevyn]

I just made a dumb joke and somebody actually modded this up "interesting" ?? Then you get modded down for pointing that out.

is this any real threat?

[v1]

I question whether this is a real threat or not. All common laser pointers use laser diodes, which at best can bee columated to a beam a foot or so wide at a half a mile. This virtually eliminates any danger of retinal damage because of how much the beam's power is spread out. The only issue I see is a temporary "flash blindness" like that of getting your picture taken with a flash bulb in use. That's not too far off from getting glare off the hood while driving to work at dawn. If a pilot can't handle that, they have no business flying an airplane.

That being said though, I still agree that giving a pilot a sudden vision obstacle while they are in the critical stages of landing their airplane is dangerous and should be unlawful.

Also I agree with an earlier post here that there is zero risk of a sustained illumination of a cockpit window from someone holding a handheld pointer two miles away aiming at a target moving at upwards of 800mph.

Real Homeland Security

[Baldrson]

If the so-called "homeland security" policies were doing their job, rather than trying to take more and civil liberties from US citizens, they'd:

1. Totally seal the borders
2. Confiscate and auction off the properties of all employers of illegal aliens to pay the expenses of
   • sending illegals home
   • back taxes and
   • social service costs of supporting illegals to date
3. provide huge prize incentives for commercial development of alternatives to the fragile air transportation infrastructure
4. provide huge prize incentives for commercial development of small-capitalization self-sufficiency systems so that small communities if not individual households could provide their basic necessities without reliance on centralized structures
5. tear down the prison system as unfit for human habitation and construct a new one in which none of
   • prisoner rape or other violence
   • hepatitis C or
   • AIDS
   was a substantial risk and
6. make sure that when national guardsmen come home from Iraq, trained in urban warfare and all pissed off at having been abused by the government, they at least have a job.

I know, I know... This is all way too sane for the scum who have occupied the positions of trust and authority within the de facto government of the US.

Re:Real Homeland Security

[Hard_Code]

7. $$$ ?

Re:Real Homeland Security

[myowntrueself]

"Totally seal the borders"

This is the part that I totally agree with; as a non-American I think that the USA *should* immediately seal all of its borders.

Anyone currently in the USA should not be allowed to leave, and noone should be permitted to enter.

Al internet connections, phone lines and satellite communications with the USA should be shut down.

A wall should be built, as high as humanly possible.

Best for everyone involved.

Re:Real Homeland Security

[Rayonic]

> make sure that when national guardsmen come home from Iraq, trained in urban warfare and all pissed off at having been abused by the government

Actually, a majority of soldiers in Iraq have a positive view of the war, and 87% report job satisfaction.

Related news story.

Re:Real Homeland Security

[myowntrueself]

What makes you think that, in the absence of American influence and interference, anyone else in the world will have a problem with Islamists or the Chinese?

;)

Taiwan would just reunify with China, like they really want to anyway, and Korea was always just a province of Japan anyways.

:-P

Re:Real Homeland Security

[Lehk228]

don't let the facts get in the way.

Re:Real Homeland Security

[pjc50]

(1) is unfeasibly expensive, you'd have to build a wall around the country and man it everywhere.

With (2), would you require proof that the employer knew their employee was illegal? If no, that's a massive violation of civil liberties; if yes, you have to build a national identity card system so that everyone can prove that they are not an illegal alien.

I don't understand what you have in mind as a solutiuon to (3).

(4) will almost certainly never work due to economies of scale, until we get nanoassemblers and home fusion power or something.

(5) and (6) are very good ideas!

Re:Real Homeland Security

[Thomas Shaddack]

All internet connections, phone lines and satellite communications with the USA should be shut down.

Fine. We still can bounce long-wave connections against the ionosphere. Ask any HAM. We can also bounce microwaves against the Moon.

Also don't forget that where are the walls there is a black market with stuff tunneled through the walls - being it tangible goods or informaitons. Given the decent number of geeks on both sides of the projected wall, many of whom despise the idea of nations and borders, I can guarantee the wall will have more holes than Microsoft Windows.

Re:Real Homeland Security

[randall_burns]

The other aspects of national security, that is really a major item:
cessation of trade deficits and cessation of the use of foreign nationals in handling of sensitive data or managing critical infrastructure. A major item in stopping trade deficits it getting energy policy back on track, and as you have pointed out elsewhere
the solution is proving of proper incentives.

Re:Real Homeland Security

[LaCosaNostradamus]

That's a good deconstruction that only reveals why it won't happen. The elites in America do not want households, neighborhoods and towns to become self-sufficient. They want them to become highly dependent. The elites want central controls to essentially make America's workforce into a mass of slaves ... but centralized controls are vulnerable to "structure hits" and all the other crap we've labelled "terror risks".

Re:Real Homeland Security

[LaCosaNostradamus]

Bye bye. Don't let the door hit you on the ass by leaving here too slowly. If cogent analysis bugs you that much, you should run back to church for some warmer and fuzzier thoughts, fucko.

Re:Real Homeland Security

[LaCosaNostradamus]

Obviously, the other 13% were the casualties.

All joking aside, anyone who let themselves be sent to Iraq by virture of being defrauded by the Bush Administration and US Congress, certainly WOULD find the Iraqi War Zone to be to their liking. Their daddies got to shoot gook kids in Vietnam, so now it's THEIR TURN to have some murderous fun at some darker-skinned person's expense.

Re:Real Homeland Security

[AtariAmarok]

"cessation of trade deficits and cessation of the use of foreign nationals in handling of sensitive data or managing critical infrastructure"

I agree on general principle. However, if we want to decrease the trade defecits, we need to "build stuff better".

Re:Real Homeland Security

[Rayonic]

What makes you think the U.S. casualty rate is even 1%?

All nitpicking aside, I hope you feel better after slandering people better than you (not to mention more well-traveled)...

Re:Real Homeland Security

[stonecypher]

A wall should be built

Well seig heil to you too, buddy.

Yeah, it's all a joke until someone rubs your nose in who your jokes make you sound like. But Americans are the ignorant xenophobes, right?

Then again, I just spent a half hour reading a bunch of people complaining about the size of the first-day tsunami donations, when by the second day they'd increased by an order of magnitude, and when the US is giving more per person than any populous unaffected nation, peppered with assorted whining about how our media spent less time covering a natural tragedy than a calculated attack to which the appropriate response divided a nation, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised in that these jokes are being made by seemingly the same people which decry them from us, and manage to stumble all over themselves looking for ways to damn us.

Look, you guys are responsible for France, and all we've got is New Jersey. Now you tell me with a straight face who are the real criminals.

Re:Real Homeland Security

[randall_burns]

The trade deficit is driven in large part by very bad trade deals and currency arrangements. The US government has had an extraordinary ability to borrow on international markets due to the US of the dollar as the international currency of reserve. I would also suggest the US tax system is fundamentally bad compared to countries like Japan--where companies also don't have the burden of regulations like affirmative action legislation or the arcane US legal system. Japan something like 1/50th as many attorneys per capita and 1/20th as many accountants per capita as the US.

There is a very clear formula for reducing trade decificits: remove taxes and regulations from locally produced goods and tax imports. Right now, we have active subsidization of imports(the exact opposite policy of what your need to close the deficits) via foreign policy. The US has spent directly and indirectly about $1.2 Trillion defending middle eastern oil supplies. If those costs were added onto that commodity, there would be strong market incentive to develop alternative energy sources.

Re:Real Homeland Security

[AtariAmarok]

I agree with much of what you said (less locking horns on immigration. For example, "also burden of regulations like affirmative action legislation". Agreed. You don't excel when you put skin color first instead of excellence. The other points I'll let stand with a nod of affirmation.

However, in regards to "US has spent directly and indirectly about $1.2 Trillion defending middle eastern oil supplies". Even without this spending, we'd get the oil at pretty much the same price. The Saddam's of the world are more than happy to make sweetheart deals which give them exclusive profits domestically while the US gets cheap oil.

Re:Real Homeland Security

[randall_burns]

However, in regards to "US has spent directly and indirectly about $1.2 Trillion defending middle eastern oil supplies". Even without this spending, we'd get the oil at pretty much the same price. The Saddam's of the world are more than happy to make sweetheart deals which give them exclusive profits domestically while the US gets cheap oil.

Here is the analysis I was talking about. I'm familiar with the claims that your are talking about on the theoretical inability of a politically unified middle east under leadership hostile to US elites, the first folks I heard talk about that was George Stigler and some colleagues at U of Chicago. What those folks tend to miss is the short term _military_ implications of that type of situation. Long term, they can't affect price much-if nothing else because alternative technologies get developed. Short term, they can cause extreme dislocation in Western economies-at serious financial costs to themselves.

Your race claim is a _low_ blow. The US has among the open immigration policy in the world. I fail to see how expropriating assets of businesses and wealthy individuals that have profited from illegal immigration--and using that revenue to facilitate repatriation is a "racist" policy. I _do_ think that NAFTA was racist--and the current practice of illegal immigration in the US has some important aspects of racism(i.e. since illegals can't vote, certain white voters get a boost in representation).

Re:Real Homeland Security

[AtariAmarok]

"Your race claim is a _low_ blow"

What are you on about? I was agreeing with your statement about affirmative action. And yes, affirmative action is about nothing other than punishing people for being of the wrong skin color. It was not even about immigration: it was about burdensome regulation. Read your own parent.

Re:Real Homeland Security

[AtariAmarok]

"...since illegals can't vote...

They vote in large numbers now. Since they tend to vote mostly for Democrats, the Democrat Party is dead set against measures that would make sure that voters are legally qualified to vote.: Democrats lose if you get rid of bogus votes. Looks like we will have this problem for quite some time.

Re:Real Homeland Security

[randall_burns]

The problem you describe with illegal aliens voting is real. However, what is a more important effect is that illegal aliens are counted for purposes of representation by the census-that effect is less obviously one that benefits democrats-and one that will be intensified if Bush gets the guest worker expansion he wants.

But what about the punks in the movie theatres?

[ScentCone]

This is serious, but not nearly as serious as what I'd like to do to the pointer-equipped, arrested development imbeciles that always seem to show up in the theater where I've just spent $9.50 to see a film. No doubt they think they're really onto something novel as they draw circles around Gollum's head, or perhaps improve Michael Moore's insufferable visage by doodling on it.

These punks, with their cheesy dime-store pointers, are eroding our cinemaplex entertainment economy. As they taint our $40 movie dates, though, they're driving me closer and closer to actually buying a big screen at home. Which is good for China, or whoever makes it that week.

Re:But what about the punks in the movie theatres?

[Black Parrot]

> This is serious, but not nearly as serious as what I'd like to do to the pointer-equipped, arrested development imbeciles that always seem to show up in the theater where I've just spent $9.50 to see a film. No doubt they think they're really onto something novel as they draw circles around Gollum's head, or perhaps improve Michael Moore's insufferable visage by doodling on it.

I suspect the anti-aircraft use will turn out to be precisely the same sort of idiots, who would never even have thought of it if not for the DoHS announcing it in their continual stream of keep-us-scared "what if" scenarios that you hear about once a week on the news. (This started after the warnings, right? I remember hearing the scaremongering on TV a long time ago, and don't remember any associated news stories about it actually happening.)

The only problem with that notion of whodunnit is how the tracking would be managed. However, the reports tend to be vague on details, so it's not clear (IMO) exactly what sort of control would actually be required for most of these incidents. Nor would I be surprised to discover that the "kiddie underground" chat rooms are abuzz with instructions for how to do it with simple OTS equipment.

At any rate, it will be interesting when the first arrest is made, and we find out who is doing it and why.

Couldn't they

[Mr. Cancelled]

use a laser-reflective material for the cockpits?

This has been a growing problem recently (this isn't the first time it's happened), so I would hope that someone's already working on such a concept.

If not for the cockpit glass, then a pair of laser-protected goggles for the pilots?

Re:Couldn't they

[Anonymous Coward]

what are you going to block? 1060nm infrared lasers? green lasers? red? block everything available and you blind the pilots as effectivly as poking their eyes out.

Re:Couldn't they

[temojen]

Sure! Which frequency?

Re:Couldn't they

[Mr. Cancelled]

what are you going to block? 1060nm infrared lasers? green lasers? red? block everything available and you blind the pilots as effectivly as poking their eyes out.

Ok... Makes sense.

So how about this: Little cameras mounted on a set of goggles/glasses, which feed their output back into the inside of the goggles.

This would effectively bypass any damage from a laser, since the laser would just appear as a light, in the "projected" video.

It'd be similar to a set of VR goggles, but instead of computer generated objects, the user would just see the cameras image as if he/she weren't wearing the goggles. With wrap arround-style of goggles, you could probably even simulate periphreal (sp?) vision as well.

Ok.. It's just an idea, but it seems that something like this should be fairly do-able with todays technology.

Re:Couldn't they

[Thomas Shaddack]

Another idea along this line, perhaps better: Use something like LCD shutters, like the auto-darkening goggles for welding. When too much light is detected, the thing goes dark. After the light intensity lowers, the glass gets transparent again. Will cause some temporary problems with visibility, but won't leave the pilots dazzled for prolonged time.

If done as electrochromic glass in the cockpit windows, can automatically switch some of the screens to visual mode (cams looking out). Could be combined with an image projected to the inner side of the cockpit windows, possibly as thermal imaging, which would also help with visibility in the night and in clouds and fog.

Re:Couldn't they

[finkployd]

Ok, so laser is light. Basically what you are suggesting is that we block light from entering the cockpit. This might prove to be a problem for the pilot.

Block a specific wavelength? which one? Green and red? Ignoring that the pilot might need to see those colors while flying lasers can be made at different wavelengths to get around that.

A more expensive solution would be to have cameras outside the cockpit and replace the windows with plasma screens. However technically cool that sounds, the numver of individual points of potential failure jumps up dramatically. I don't know what a good solution to this problem should be, other than people not being assholes, and that is not going to happen.

As I typed this my local Pittsburgh news station just reported that someone shined a bright spotlight into the cockpits of two planes that were taking off at Pgh Internation this morning.

Umm

[nizo]

Don't commercial airplanes land themselves anyway? How would blinding the pilot cause a problem if this is the case? Now if it is a guide for a surface to air missile, that is a different story.

Re:Umm

[nizo]

This article talks about this a bit:

That's why autopilots are typically engaged on commercial aircraft throughout nearly the entire flight. When human pilots take control--usually during takeoff and landing, and occasionally in mid flight--it's largely because they need to stay in practice, not because the autopilot would be unable to fly safely. (In fact, in bad weather, the FAA may require that pilots allow the autopilot and FMS, which don't rely on visual cues, to land the plane.)

So at least according to this article the planes are capable of landing on autopilot but typically the pilot does take over during landing, so it does indeed look like this could be a problem.

Re:Umm

[chialea]

Boeing and Airbus have had autolanding capability since the 1970s, I believe. They certainly have it now. It's just now becoming more prevalent because a) airliners are replaced slowly, as their useful lifetimes are quite long and b) it's expensive. It's most useful for landing in places with consistently low visability, where one might not be able to land according to regulations when using a pilot.

Lea

Re:Umm

[drinkypoo]

Welp, I sit corrected and hang my head in shame. I wonder whether the worst landings I've experienced (mind you, they were all "good" landings) were human or computer-flown.

I also wonder what search terms I would have had to throw at google to find that information so I wouldn't look like a putz. I did a search ("self landing commercial airplane") first, and didn't come up with anything, my google-fu must be weak today.

Which aircraft in common service today are self-landing?

Re:Umm

[iamatlas]

If a terrorist in the US has access to surface-to-air missiles, it is definitely a different story: At that point, the laser is the least of our problems. Now, even though this is ridiculous, at least the lasers are the most of our (televised) problems.

Re:Umm

[chialea]

I don't have much information readily available (but send me email if you're interested, my dad is a pilot), but I do have a link to a video of the first public demo from Airbus. Note that the plane crashes.

http://www.alexisparkinn.com/photogallery/Videos /A irbus320_trees.mpg

I'm told that a) they fixed it and b) Boeing had it first, but this video is relatively old. In any case, by googling around, you can find sales announcements of airplanes with autoland, like this one:

Airbus' ACJ family features unmatched cabin width, comfort and spaciousness, unmatched payload/range flexibility, and an unmatched modern design - all for about the same price as its competitors. It is the only business jet certificated for the public transport of over 30 fare-paying passengers, the only one with fly-by-wire, Category 3B autoland and fuel-saving wingtip fences as standard, and is backed by an unparalleled worldwide network of spares, training and support centres.

There is also a (google cached) discussion of it here: http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:Kvfjhdn15DMJ: www.luchtzak.be/postt5393.html+airbus+autoland&hl= en

Lea

Re:Umm

[Paul Jakma]

Please, that video is not of Airbus demonstrating auto-landing. It's of an Air France 'demo' slow, low-level fly-past at an airfield (ie fly along the runway and continue on), in 'unclean' configuration (flaps and gear down, similar to landing configuration - but it's not doing an auto-landing.).

The accident report blamed human error, particularly the captain. He was ill-prepared, partly Air France's fault as the airfield map they gave him did not show the trees, and was responsible for several errors. The barometric altimeter was miscalibrated by 67 feet, the captain then ignored the voice-sounded warning of 100feet from the (very accurate) radio altimeter and trusted the barometric altimeter instead. He then flew the plane in an attitude and configuration in which it could not recover quickly from, and finally, he applied power to recover too late (big turbofans take time to spool up from idle and start producing power).

The captain maintains the plane did not respond as it should have done. Firstly, he claims one engine did not respond within the time it should have (which is plausible) and secondly that the flight software malfunctioned and did not respond correctly to flight-control input (which is slightly less plausible). There also claims that the FDR was tampered with after the accident (claims are that 4s were cut, to make it seem like the captain applied power 4s too late).

The captain may be right, however even so he was negligent and made the crucial mistake of misjudging his altitude. Had he flown the fly-past at the intended AGL of 100 feet, the accident would never have occured, regardless of the other factors.

See, eg, this safety-critical post.

PS: "Autoland" has been around a long time, Cat-III equipped runways have been around since the 1970s i think, possibly the 1960s. It still requires a human to eyeball the runway though and make the final decision, to 50feet above runway or so for Cat-IIIb.

Re:Umm

[chialea]

Sorry, I haven't actually watched the movie myself (can't, the network here bites, and I'm routing my traffic through school). My dad (pilot, yadda yadda) does claim that there is a video of the crash I mention that he has seen, and I just assumed that this was it. He may be wrong, it's been known to happen.

If it makes you feel better, I'd heard about that crash as well. :P

Lea

Re:Umm

[Paul Jakma]

It's a reasonable small file for an mpeg, less than 1MB. There is no other Airbus crash I know of that'd fit any kind of "crashing on autolanding" scenario (misconceived notion thereof or not).

Also note that the voice-over on that video is misleading "this is the first fully-automated plane flown by a computer" is utter bovine-faeces. The A320 simply brought to civil aviation technology which was pioneered in military aviation - "fly by wire" (eg the General Dynamics F16 from the 1970s). And while it requires a computer (3 actually, for redundancy) to fly, it's still a human making the decisions who is well-trained (or should be) in the features and limitations of the technology of his aeroplane. Eg, in the Airbus fly-past accident, the pilot had to actually to disable a safety-feature (auto-thrust) in order to make the fly-past, as the flight software by default would not have allowed the pilot to make that fly-past in landing configuration. Initial suspicion in that accident had centred around whether the EFCS (flight software) had somehow gotten confused, thought the plane was meant to land and not allowed the pilot to recover, however this suspicion proved unfounded mostly - the problem was with much older technology, the wetware in the cockpit and, possibly, aerodynamic stall of one engine.

PS: My father was a pilot too, retired from civil aviation (everything from banner towing in his younger days to business jets across the world to jet airliners to trucking cargo..) a few years ago. It's fun growing up with a father who's a pilot isn't it? (well, you dont see them that often, but that aside.) ;)

No way...

[Quixote]

There is no way that a hand-held laser can track a plane flying at 300mph at 8500 feet; find the cockpit and stay there for any period of time. If someone can pull that off, make that guy a surgeon. You can barely see a plane at 8500 feet!

Have they explored onboard possibilities? Some emission coming from one of the onboard instruments?

Re:No way...

[lightknight]

Radar to get a general fix on the plane, telescope for visual. Wouldn't need an expensive radar or telescope, just a general fix.

Re:No way...

[Iphtashu Fitz]

There is no way that a hand-held laser can track a plane flying at 300mph at 8500 feet

Where does it say that it was a hand-held laser? One of the articles says it'd have to be " fairly sophisticated to track a plane traveling at that altitude". That sure doesn't sound like a hand-held laser to me.

I would imagine that a good quality laser mounted on a high quality tripod along with a powerful sighting scope wouldn't be all that difficult to whip up. If tv camera people can track the space shuttle from a distance of a few miles then a strategically positioned laser/scope along the axis of the airplanes flight path should be able to target the cockpit enough to get noticed.

Re:No way...

[realdpk]

A general fix would hardly be enough to get the light to shine into the cockpit for 10 seconds.

Re:No way...

[YrWrstNtmr]

There is no way that a hand-held laser can track a plane flying at 300mph at 8500 feet; find the cockpit and stay there for any period of time.

Exactly.

It is being done. Who is doing it, and how are they doing it?

Re:No way...

[YrWrstNtmr]

I guess you missed the part about: "and how are they doing it"

Somehow, someone seems to be able to track airliner cockpits with a laser for a few seconds. Logically, it can't be done with a cheapo handheld. So...how are they doing it? And who?

Re:No way...

[WhiteBandit]

You can barely see a plane at 8500 feet!

Err?

You can easily see passenger aircraft all the way up to 30,000 feet or however high they fly.

While it isn't likely a hand held laser can actually track an airplane, it probably isn't that hard to randomly "hit" a plane that is coming in for landing.

Since the plane would be a ways out and at a relatively low angle due to its approach, any sort of light could be projected into the cockpit fairly unobstructed. I'm sure by just waving your laser back and forth in the general vicinity of the aircraft, it is possible to get lucky and actually briefly project the laser into the cockpit.

Re:Hmm. I dunno.

[ScentCone]

...it would be awful hard for something from the ground to actually hit the inside of the cockpit...

But I've been on many a looping approach where the plane is banked substantially to one side or the other for a good minute or so, during which I'm looking down, at a steep angle, right into business districts, neighborhoods, etc. If my eyes can see the ground, the ground can see my eyes.

Happened to me

[HPNpilot]

One night I was on a CAP SAR flight and we were targeted by such a laser. They can be very bright when your eyes are accustomed to the dark! When we tried to locate the source and got closer, it stopped. It was coming from a residential area. I had spots in my vision like someone took flash photos and I looked into the strobe.

One note; there was mention in the news of a quote from an FBI agent who said it had to be a sophisticated laser to track a plane for severla seconds at 8500 feet. I disagree. I believe with a braced or tripod mounted unit in combination with the beam divergence holding on target for a few seconds is easy.

Re:Friggin' ...

[D'Sphitz]

you're correct. the whole internet should be taken down and replaced with tsunami news and discussion and donation soliciting for the next month at least. i also find it really offensive that anyone has the gall to think about anything but tsunamis. the nerve of some people.

Yeah sure, is it an imaginary laser pen too?

[t_allardyce]

This whole thing is some serious bullshit - are we really expected to believe that someone can point a laser at a plane the best part of a mile away going at anything over 100mph and actually hit someones eyes (which you cant see) behind a windscreen (which you can barely make out). Even if they were standing in the waiting room facing the parked plane 30 feet away it would be a challenge. If someone was that accurate they would just park near a runway and take pot-shots with a rifle, this is the most absurd bullshit scare-mongering, or how can i put it... 'terror' tactic that has been used to date to scare us, and behold, its not coming from the terrorists, its coming from media who need to sensationalise dog shit to get some ratings.

Re:Yeah sure, is it an imaginary laser pen too?

[applemasker]

My only regret is that I have no mod points for you, sir.

Re:Yeah sure, is it an imaginary laser pen too?

[Iphtashu Fitz]

Why does everybody think this is just a case of some kid who bought a handheld laser pointer and is trying to point it at an airplane that flew overhead?

Come on people, it doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to figure out that a combination of a commercial/scientific laser along with a good quality sighting scope mounted on a high quality tripod wouldn't be too difficult or expensive to slap together. Hell, just get a good laser and mount it on top of a good pair of military observation binoculars and you'd probably be ready to rock & roll.

It also doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to realize that from a mountain top or other high peak of land you could target aircraft flying directly towards your position from a few miles away. If it's flying in your direction then its horizontal and lateral positions won't change very much so you wouldn't need a sophisticated tracking system. You wouldn't even need a very high position if you intend on targeting aircraft that are landing - just an open area a mile or so from the end of the runway.

Re:Yeah sure, is it an imaginary laser pen too?

[t_allardyce]

A few slight problems there - firstly: planes generally don't fly level and directly towards mountains for obvious reasons, secondly: at 2km (a bit over a mile) a 0.1 degree error translates to about 3.5m off target (ie you miss the plane), 0.1 is abit much to ask for a moving target...

Re:Yeah sure, is it an imaginary laser pen too?

[t_allardyce]

Very differnt, the plane is slower, the bullets are usually explosive and don't actually need to hit the plane, and at the end of the day you're not aiming for a bulls-eye, your aiming for a big hunk of metal which is slightly easier. Then consider that they often missed...

WARNING:

[Zork the Almighty]

WARNING: Do not point laser into remaining good eye.

Re:WARNING:

[Lehk228]

it was also on Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

Re:WARNING:

[plastik55]

1984 called, they want their false accusation of plagiarism back.

Laser Dazzler?

[JhohannaVH]

Is it possible that someone with military experience or some such? Especially considering Colorado Springs. There's six huge and important military installations within about a 5 mile radius of the COS runways. Not to mention that it's easily accessible by the public, probably one of the worst security features (I used to work for Western Pacific Airlines! :O)!! Interestingly enough, many non-lethal weapons developers are headquartered in the area, to include Jaycor, Loral, and Raytheon. It may be possible that someone or someone's was able to gain access to a Laser Dazzler and is 'having some fun', or causing major trouble. Interesting thought... I saw these on a program on History Channel, and they were pretty amazing, and could possibly result in such things.

You forgot something....

[TimeTraveler1884]

5. Profit!

That's exactly the problem

[SupremeTaco]

Airlines spend a lot of money keeping pilots flying. You want to keep the good pilots flying, not pushing paper or worse because they're blinded by lasers.
Even if the planes takeoff and land by themselves, which they pretty much are capable of, you want to have the best pilot available for the job, in case something goes wrong in flight.

And again last night!

[ShmuelP]

Another similar incident is being reported to have occurred Wednesday night at Teterboro airport, according to AP. Considering that some of the approach routes run pretty low over I-80, and not far from several other major highways, this could potentially be a Very Bad Thing (tm).

IRTFA, My opinion

[telemonster]

Okay, it would be my guess that someone used a high powered YAG laser or maybe a large DPSS. I seriously doubt this was from a handheld unit.

The beams could make it into the cockpit upon approach I believe.

You have to be an idiot to do such a thing. The "pulsing" factor makes me think it might have been a pulsed YAG system, since many are triggered by flashlamps.

Crazy stuff, and it will make it difficult for those of us into lasers for entertainment.

For a good pic of a YAG on a clear night (this isn't mine):
A flashlamp triggered yag

Argon on foggy night

I have some pics from playing around here:

http://users.757.org/~ethan/pics/lasers/

Don't forget to check out www.linux-laser.org, an opensource linux laser platform. The funny thing is the only major software to use the device so far is for Windows XP.

Re:IRTFA, My opinion

[Have Blue]

Uh... In your second picture, why does the laser beam end before the top of the frame? Either you suck at photoshop, or you own a camera with a really, really, REALLY fast shutter :P

Re:IRTFA, My opinion

[telemonster]

It isn't my photo, but I have no doubts the picture is real (look at other images in the directory that the picture is in). It is a matter of the beam dissapearing in the clouds and the angle at which he took the picture.

How is this more dangerous

[511pf]

How is this more dangerous than, let's say, shooting at the planes with a REAL gun? Are we going to ban those too? If we don't, do the terrorists win?

Re:How is this more dangerous

[SumDog]

A real gun at a plane. You've gotta give me a break. Did you read the article about the lazer featured here on Slashdot.

First, a real gun simply wouldn't have the range. The guns that would have the range would probably fall into the same catagory as fully automatic weapons which are all carfully registered by the governemnt.

If a gun does pierce a plane and sends it to the groud. The FAA can analyize whatever is left (casing that haven't melted, the blast pattern on the plane) and use it as evidence.

What evidence is left over from a lazer? Nothing. You heat up the fuel tanks on the wings, they catch fire (they probably won't explode as Diesel doesn't tend to explode unlike in the movie Die Hard), but it will still take the plane down.

Do I think citizens need to be able to own semi-automatic AR-15s? No, and I don't believe anyone should be allowed to posess a lazer as dangerous as this one without at least having a firearms permit and full background check (if at all!)

This can't be civilian

[sutirt]

I've been seeing these stories here and there for about a month now. I think it's impractical that anyone is a) playing around with handheld laser pointers or b) trying to blind pilots.

Unfortunately the only thing I can think of is that this is simply a tracking system for some other purpose. Although it doesn't seem like the cockpit would be the most efficient place to shine the laser for, say, a missle. I would think that center fuel tank would be the most advantagous location.

The other more likely scenario is a covert government/military application. There's no telling what that could be.

Aircrew of the future.

[GomezAdams]

This is an old joke from the cockpit...
The modern aircrew will consist of a pilot, a computer and a dog.
The computer flies the plane.
The pilot feeds the dog.
The dog bites the pilot if he tries to fly the plane.

Re:Hmm. I dunno.

[ScentCone]

I'm referring, obviously, to line of sight. The parent comment called into question whether or not a laser from the ground could enter the cockpit, and hence my response. Now: getting that (12-inch wide?) beam to stay on the cockpit window long enough for it to be at least memorable for the flight crew? I don't know... but I just went outside with a Leupold rifle scope (no rifle!) and held it pretty damn steadily on a 737 approaching Reagan National down the Potomac. If an apparatus (say, a two-by-four!) was mounted on a basic tripod with a fluid head for steadiness, it shouldn't be all that hard.

Re:Hmm. I dunno.

[valkraider]

It is not so much as "impossible" as "improbable without major help, technology, or infrastructure". In the latter, it would seem not too hard to catch or detect anyone doing such.

The ability of a human with a stealthy hand(s) held laser to actually track and hit a pilot well enough to do damage or create risk at most any airport in the world - is debatable. It *seems* highly unlikely, but then again - I am just a slashdot expert... ;)

Some doubts

[CaroKann]

I doubt that a laser attack would be very effective. From the FBI bulletin, "In certain circumstances, if laser weapons adversely affect the eyesight of both pilot and co-pilot during a non-instrument approach, there is a risk of airliner crash". For both the pilot and co-pilot to be blinded while they happened to be doing a landing without instruments seems highly unlikely to me. Since a laser shines in a very fine point, it would take some mighty fine pointing to blind both pilots in a moving aircraft, through windshield, which will bend the light somewhat.

Re:Some doubts

[shadowsurfr1]

It's just the American government trying to prevent people from doing something very hard to do.

Just like someone banned nail clippers on airplanes. Who's going to find a way to take down an entire plane with nail clippers before they're tackled to the ground!

Re:Some doubts

[hardcode]

Don't you know there are crack groups of Al Qaeda beauticians out there?

How can you blind a person w/ a laser?

[martyb]

Several years ago, I read a short [fictional] story about an attempt to overthrow a leader. There was no way to get close to him, physically. So, conventional ammunition was out of the picture. They story has it that the "all-knowing, all-seeing" leader was taken out in a different way. He still lived, but he was blinded by a short burst from a high-powered laser at an outdoor speaking engagement.

So, the question I have is Just what does it take in the way of power level and duration to actually blind a person?

If it were feasible, I'd imagine the CIA or some other TLA would have used it by now and we'd have a few blind leaders around, or obvious steps taken to protect leaders' vision. So, am I missing something here?

Re:How can you blind a person w/ a laser?

[alienw]

Laser pointer versus the sun.

Re:How can you blind a person w/ a laser?

[alc6379]

I'd've thought the answer to this question was obvious: Jam it into their eye.

I'm guessing that with the Member ID as low as yours, senility is finally setting in...

Re:How can you blind a person w/ a laser?

[angel'o'sphere]

So, am I missing something here?

You missed a physics lession in school I guess. Or you have never bought a CD Rom drive and read the "Warning class 1a laser device" label on it? Every laser is dangerous. Its only a mtter of exposure time and bad luck (state of your eyes lense) at the moment its shining into your eye.


If it were feasible, I'd imagine the CIA or some other TLA would have used it by now and we'd have a few blind leaders around


Well, laser with the goal to blind people are forbidden by the Geneva Convention. But in the news about the Iraq War it became obvious that most US soldiers never have heared about it.

More on topic regarding my citation of you: there is an international contrac (since the early 50th I think) wich restrains governments to attemt assasinations on other governements leaders. Regardless wether "dictators" or free elected or kings.

So no, the CIA never had really the option to make an assasination of Saddam. Except in a way that noone ever could prove they where involved.

What do you think why no one makes such attempts once a year here or there?

angel'o'sphere

The counter seems basic...

[dfenstrate]

Obviously they saw the laser spot in this particular instance, but I can't imagine it would take a very sophisticated electronics package to detect dangerous levels of incoming laser light.

Additionally, would it be too much trouble to carry some kind of goggles in the cockpit that block out the IR spectrum, in case such a laser was detected? Or they could just put cardboard over the windows until the aforementioned laser detector stopped alarming, if it was a visible spectrum laser.

Re:The counter seems basic...

[dfenstrate]

Airliners can land themselves nowadays. Didn't you know that?

Moreover, if you've got a danger of blinding the pilot, I think the plane can wait a bit to land, don't you?

Re:The counter seems basic...

[Thomas Shaddack]

Or they could just put cardboard over the windows until the aforementioned laser detector stopped alarming, if it was a visible spectrum laser.

Or they could just put a notch-filter coating on the cockpit windows. Filter out the few wavelengths the mainstream lasers (freq-doubled IR semiconductor ("green laser pointer"), argon, and that's mostly all the potentially dangerous ones. Infrared coating could be "wideband" (from 10,000 nm of CO2 lasers to the start of visible spectrum), as it won't worsen the visibility (the visible wavelengths filters will dim the glass a bit). Also, the last phases of the landing maneuvers are already pretty much automated, at least with the more modern planes (A340 being an example where the computer-controlled landing is AFAIK smoother than what a human pilot can do), so even both pilots blinded could theoretically land. Besides, a landing maneuver can be aborted and the plane lifted to higher altitude even with vision-impaired pilot, and held there for couple minutes before the pilots recover enough to kick off an instrument landing (other planes in the area will make them space - that's what the Tower is there for).

So many safety levels, and people still freak out.

Re:The counter seems basic...

[dfenstrate]

revscat, is that you?

Solution: Ban All Lasers from the private Citizen

[nurb432]

Cant have something in the hands of the private citizen that MIGHT be used improperly can we?

For get the multitude of legal uses, if there is ONE illegal use, we must take it off the market. And investigate anyone hat purchased the product before the ban..

Must protect society...

gee...

[Cryptnotic]

It's a good thing there are no well-financed, dedicated groups of people with deliberate long-term plans for malice against the West (especially the United States).

Oh wait...

DYI Lasers

[nurb432]

You can build your own CO2 laser in your garage that can melt metal..

Shall we also restrict the knowledge to build this?

How about restrict basic knowledge of physics while we are at it...

And who gives someone the right to decide what i need and dont need?

Not that i want a high power laser, today.. But i might tomorrow.

Real threat is not toys

[I-R-Baboon]

As per TFA:
"ANALYSIS: The FBI believes that only well-financed terrorist groups would be able to develop or purchase a laser blinding system. Estimates project it would cost a group approximately $50,000 to obtain a military-grade laser system."

I would personally be more concerned by the potential from "hobby lasers" such as the ones that can be built from non monitored equipment capable of burning through wood blocks and other things depending on the power of the device. This is not to discount the damage a toy laser pointing device can do to the eye, but in terms of the small moving target and distance the laser must travel and medium(s) it must pass through how can they really be a threat? Not being a laser hobbyist, I may speak not knowing the facts but it seems to me if you could get the setup going in your garage why not in a mobile device such as a small Mack truck? If you could get the stability needed to keep the alignment and the power and inert gas needed I can see the potential for a risk here. This would yield a mobile assault platform that would very difficult to track down and have the potential for damage depending on the quality and power of the laser device.

Then again, two can play the disinformation game. In terms of monetary value, a war of attrition forcing more to be spent on securing and investigating blind avenues would be devastating for security budgets. Money and resources would be wasted deterring from a more viable plan on much softer targets. Who is to say this chatter they fall on so much is not anymore accurate than the Uranium connection Iraq had? Many things have the potential to be weapons on many objects, and creating a police state will only force things into the black market which always thrives. For example the war on drugs, they are quite illegal but has that made them purged from American soil?

Anyone remember the pilot blinded by the Russians?

[TheNarrator]

Anyone remember this story a year or two back? It was only covered by a few conservative news sites about a navy pilot being blinded by a laser from a suspected Russian spy vessel.

WASHINGTON -- A San Diego-based Navy officer whose eyes were damaged by an apparent laser beam from a suspected Russian spy ship said yesterday he was injured by what was an act of war, terrorism or criminal conduct.

Re:When green lasers are outlawed, only outlaws wi

[lildogie]

> You'll take my green lasers when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers.

Wouldn't that be "cold, RED fingers?"

Light has a wave nature.

[AnotherBlackHat]

IIRC, due to the wave nature of light, visible light (even from a laser) spreads out approximately 10 cm per kilometer.

At at typical crusing altitude, the "spot" from a normal laser pointer on the ground would be bigger than your head, and so dim you couldn't even see it, much less be blinded by it.

-- Should you believe authority without question?

Re:Friggin' ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, the tsunami... I thought this was another Iraq reference.

Re:Search Engine Bombing web site

[GrAfFiT]

Didn't notice it o.0 It even appears offscreen under firefox..

And all that would solve...??

[mrbuttboy]

Wow,this was modded insightful. Sad day on /. You could claim Interesting I suppose....and this is on topic in what way?

but lets address these insane points one at a time.

1. Totally seal the borders

Other then not being feasible from shear size(about 20,000 km of boarder), how would you afford it? Ask for donations?

2. Confiscate and auction off the properties of all employers of illegal aliens to pay the expenses of

I am going to take this to mean getting rid of the millions of people that do all the jobs Americans dont want. I am sure you and everyone else here wants to pay vastly more for any number of services, things like food, as well as screw everybody who is already doing all those jobs. Making them legal, giving them protection they deserve is a much better answer. Yes costs will rise but not as much and it vastly benefits the people who are already doing those jobs.

provide huge prize incentives for commercial development of alternatives to the fragile air transportation infrastructure

because if you throw money at a problem it always gets solved. I think the military would LOVE what you describe. I don't know why THEY havent thought of having a cheap,tough, flying transport device.

provide huge prize incentives for commercial development of small-capitalization self-sufficiency systems so that small communities if not individual households could provide their basic necessities without reliance on centralized structures

Energy,sure,do able....water? Waste? FOOD?! You want everyone to be a little space habitat, WHY!?!? So that we can be even more isolated? I suppose if there were legions of terrorist walking our streets we might need to stay indoors at all times. Did something change while I was making this post?

Tear down the prison system as unfit for human habitation and construct a new one in which none of

Yes,the prison system sucks. But for my money getting the MILLIONS of non-violent drug offenders out of the system will help fix alot towards what you mention. I am not really sure why the Homeland security would deal with this exactly but fixing the prison system would be good.

make sure that when national guardsmen come home from Iraq, trained in urban warfare and all pissed off at having been abused by the government, they at least have a job.

Well,they can get a job picking lettuce. Besides,there isnt going to be a problem. Iraq is bad but compared to Nam? PLEASE. And yet somehow there was no problem for our society. You are right thou, they do deserve jobs when they get back and should be treated with honor.

Non-threat

[crumley]

As explained in the Ask the Pilot column, this threat is severely over-hyped. The probability of success is so low compared to the risk of detection, that its unlikely that terrorsits would try this tact.

That's truly hilarious...

[Baldrson]

Imagine the position of these people -- they can be kept over there until they die by the brass if the brass has any reason to believe they would be a problem if sent home. They are of course "guaranteed" anonymity during the poll taking process and -- amazingly -- they all say exactly what they need to say to avoid being categorized as a problem. Who knows... they may even get to the point where they believe the answers themselves so long as it maximizes their likelihood of survival.

Guys like you are what make the electoral process in the US what it is.

Re:That's truly hilarious...

[Rayonic]

Is there some kind of conspiracy-theory newsletter you people subscribe to?

Want to hit that cockpit with your LASER? Easy...

[human bean]

... Just keep the same old principle in mind that has been in use since WWI (Yes, that's right. The early nineteen hundreds).

"Speed of motion" (as opposed to actual velocity) is apparent. When the aircraft is coming toward or away from you, it's speed of motion is less than if it was passing side to side. Just get in line with the sucker as it lines up on approach. Fire toward it.

Rifle fire has brought down military jets with this technique. It's as old as the first biplanes, and still works.

Chances are pretty good that you can do this with a proper rifle scope and a small hand LASER. As far as brightness goes, remember, the LASER (even at five milliwatts) is focused tightly. The beam is usually also parallel to a good extent. I can verify that at five miles on a bright day a five milliwatt LASER is the brightest thing on the horizon IF YOU GET LINED UP WITH IT.

what a troll post.

[twitter]

Gee, you would not want anyone firing laser beams at airplanes in any of the 6,000 miles of US border space. To keep that from happening, I suppose you could empty the two million or so US prisoners onto the border and tell them to watch out for suspicious people with freaking lasers. They would each get about 12 feet of border to patrol, but would feel much less crowded than they were in jail. To keep them from raping each other, you could hire all those boys coming back from Iraq to watch them. Illegal aliens and their employers could also be pressed into service and the rest of us could sleep easy, knowing that we'd always have a job feeding the border patrol. Safe at last, safe at last, thank God Almighty, I'm safe and Socially Secure at last.

Yeah, but

[robsteele]

How do pilots know they're being lased (is that a word?) Are they noticing a scintillating light in the cockpit or do they have detection technology? If they have technical means, how long have they had it? I mean, maybe they were always being targeted before but just didn't know it.

And regarding targeting--everyone seems to think it's so hard--what if you scaned the lazer over a grid around the plane? It'd be hard to miss, though I doubt the resulting brief flash would hurt anyone.

Finally, would some guy on the ground pointing a laser at a plane be able to see when he hit it?

How can a laser be tracked by rader???

[moab9]

I read in one of the articles that supposedly air traffic controllers had tracked the source of the laser to some residential neighborhood. Is this your standard reporter screw-up or is this actually possible>

Sounds good to me.

[Baldrson]

You've heard of "The American Experiment"? Well what good scientist would allow contamination into or out of his experiment?

This sort of originated in the Enlightenment around debates between whether nature or theology should be the arbitrater of truth. The "nature" advocates, otherwise known as scientists came up with the idea that separation of experimental conditions from surrounding conditions was a really really good idea for discovering truth.

I think they were right.

Re:Sounds good to me.

[myowntrueself]

"separation of experimental conditions from surrounding conditions was a really really good idea for discovering truth."

Its a good idea, in principle. But it has to be just that; a principle.

In practice, of course, every single bit of the universe is connected to every other bit and its practically impossible to seperate things completely.

It may be possible to seperate things enough for a given purpose or a given experiment, but one should always be careful about placing too much faith in it. Its really just a matter of reducing the variables enough that you can ignore them -- for now.

I like scientific method, its useful. But it does have its limitations and this is one of them.

However, in the case of the USA, I think that a wall would be 'enough' so long as it were as high as humanly possible. With broken glass on top.

;)

Locate the laser with radar?

[MoebiusStreet]

The low power, spreading beam, and difficulty of following the plane aren't the only fishy things. In a related article

air traffic controllers used radar to determine the laser came from a residential area in suburban Warrensville Heights

How in the world does one use radar to determine the source of a laser?

Re:Locate the laser with radar?

[n6mod]

Thank you.

That is what set of my bullshit detector on this one.

That, and there's absolutely no mention on AvWeb, which would be all over this if it were legit.

Re:Locate the laser with radar?

[DustMagnet]

How in the world does one use radar to determine the source of a laser?

I have no idea and I work with both radar and lasers for a living (I know more about radar). There are other things in the story that can't be true, so either the FBI isn't telling the whole story or parts of the story is false. Green lasers would be my last choice.

Re:Locate the laser with radar?

[MoebiusStreet]

either the FBI isn't telling the whole story or parts of the story is false

So is the press sensationalizing, or is the DHS/FAA empire building? I think the press has its hands full with other stories at the moment, so what does that leave....?

Laser Dazzle Weapons

[frank249]

As far back as 1981, the British Royal Navy tested a top secret weapon system called 'Laser Dazzle Sight,'(LDS). and they used it during the Falklands War where high speed, wave-skipping Argentinean pilots, met a dazzling array of laser beams designed to blind them.

According to this Royal School of Artillery paper 'The most likely choice of lasers for a dazzle weapon would be
Argon (458 - 515 nm, blue/green) or Ne YAG freq doubled(532 nm, green).'

According to the Federation of American Scientists In the 1970's it was claimed that Chinese soldiers were blinded by Soviet-built laser systems during the China-Vietnam war. During the Iran-Iraq War, over 4,000 Iranian soldiers sustained injuries due to Iraqi laser systems. Throughout the 1980's, the Soviet Union were long suspected of directing lasers at US spyplanes. Today anti-personnel laser weapons are inexpensive, sold openly by the Third World, have line-of-sight aiming, and are capable of producing catastrophic results if used against aircrews and sensors in flight.

In 1989 a US-USSR bilateral agreement imposed restrictions on the use of low-energy lasers. In 1989 the International Committee of the Red Cross called for multi-lateral controls.

On 13 October 1995 the Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons (Protocol IV) was proposed. In 1998 it became international law but Human Rights Watch is concerned that the US is developing Dazzle weapons that do not cause permanent blindness and would circumvent the blinding weapons agreement.

Now while the threat from laser weapons are real, I think the odds are greater that a real terrorist would use a man portable anti-aircraft missle.

Re:Laser Dazzle Weapons

[JhohannaVH]

Cops are currently using these.. I posted somethin' about it a bit earlier... here's another very interesting article about them: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bi bcode=1998SPIE.3575...26K&db_key=AST. Dunno, but maybe there were SWAT operations in the area? :P

Re:Laser Dazzle Weapons

[tomcode]

Someone once told me the best way to make a laser into a weapon is to put the power supply in an airplane and drop it on your enemy's head.

Is your "mrbuttboy" nym a joke?

[Baldrson]

Never mind. The odds of you being a troll with a nym like that is approximately 1-1e-10

Remember This

[cpt_rhetoric]

Lasers don't kill people, people kill people! Who else wants to help me start some local chapters of the NLA (National Laser Association)?

Quick experiment and math

[Anonymous Coward]

I was curious whether it was remotely possible for this to be a handheld device. I did a quick experiment to quantify the stability of my hands while holding a simulated laser device (a 10" bamboo chopstick) as steadily as possible, and then scaled the distance up.

The steadiest I could hold the simulated laser resulted in a 1mm quiver at the tip. If we suppose the aircraft is 30k' away (about 5.7 miles), then:

x / 30k' = 1mm / 10"

x = 36meters = 118' quiver.

So, whatever this thing is, it isn't handheld.

Re:Quick experiment and math

[bhima]

What about on a rifle mount?

Re:Hmm. I dunno.

[ScentCone]

Again, we're talking about line of sight. Laser can get through cockpit windows on approach. That's my point.

Further, I think that just sweeping the laser across the front end of the plane as much possible, even if fleetingly, would probably result in the perception that the cockpit is being illuminated. The refraction off of the windshield glass is going to enhance that "it's in my eyes" sensation.

Easy Solution

[sunderland56]

Fact: pilots of commercial airliners do NOT look out the window.

First, the windows are too bloody high to see the ground anyway. On the crucial part of the journey - the landing - you're nose up, so all you can see out the window is sky and clouds. You can't legally land any Boeing/Airbus/etc. on VFR except in a (very dire) emergency.

So, simple solution? Paint the cockpit windows flat black. Over 90% of the crew wouldn't even notice. Unless the laser is strong enough to burn a hole in the 8" thick glass, it's no longer a problem.

Too be fair,

[Duhavid]

20+ years of Star Wars were focused on tracking a ballistic missile for long enough and with enough power to burn thru the aluminum outer shell and to do enough damage to the interior so as to make it incapable of detonating it's warhead. A failure to acheive this goal does not nessesarily imply the lesser task of hitting a cockpit window is ruled out.

I agree that using lasers against airplanes does not seem a good terrorist tactic.

The movie "Phone booth"

[telemonster]

I'd also like to point out the utter dissapointment in the movie "phone booth" ... when the sharp shooter aimed the laser scope at the victim, he could have looked at the beam on his coat and matched it with where the beam goes thru the glass. This would have given him the proper angle to pinpoint the general direction that the sharpshooter was located. Same with when the sharpshooter fired the bullet and shot him.

Re:Laser blinding weapons are made by China

[DragonTHC]

laser weapons nothing. you can accomplish this with a $300 motorized telescope and a slightly powerful green laser pointer/module something about 8mW would easily go 10000 feet.

hysteria

[jeif1k]

There is no evidence that that is possible even if you look directly into fairly powerful laser pointers (many milliwatts). In order to harm someone's eyesight in the cockpit of a moving aircraft from miles away, you would need a fairly powerful laser and you would need to aim it accurately. I would guess that there are a lot simpler and cheaper ways to interfere with aircraft operations.

However, even though there is no evidence of actual injury, people still report getting injured by laser pointers all the time. That suggests that there is a kind of fear and hysteria about these devices (maybe caused by too much SciFi) that now seems to be cross-breeding with the terrorism scares.

Re:hysteria

[prshaw]

They don't have to harm the pilot.

It could be more like setting off a camera flash in the cockpit while taking off or landing. The flash won't hurt him, but if he can't see for critical seconds or jerks the wheel or who know what else, that could.

Re:hysteria

[jeif1k]

This is not like setting off a flash at all. In order to be affected by a laser, you have to be looking at it. It is highly unlikely that both pilot and copilot would be looking at the laser at the same time.

Furthermore, pilots are trained not to do anything stupid when something unexpected happens. They have to deal with glare, reflections, and unexpected events all the time. This seems pretty minor.

Re:Hmm. I dunno.

[bungalow]

If my eyes can see the ground, the ground can see my eyes.

If your plane is tilted such that you can see the ground, then the people on the ground can see that portion of the plane which has windows, but it doesn't follow that they can see your eyes, or distinguish your eyes from the rest of your head, or distinguish those individual windows, at distances of several thousand feet.

The people on the ground at the terminal can usually only make out profiles of those inside a plane still at the gate(if that much), and that's only a 200-300 foot distance.

Alternative method, perhaps?

[Killjoy-Modus]

I'm ignorant of current policies concerning in-flight cockpit procedures and airport screenings (I haven't flown in ten years), so I'm going to go for broke on this suggestion. Might someone onboard a flight aim a cheap pen or keychain laser pointer into the open cockpit, thus striking the glass and alarming the pilots?

Venkman response

[freeze128]

Laser Vendor: "Do you have government issued clearance to use a laser?"
Peter Venkman: "Back off man, I'm a scientist!"

No Clancy Comments?

[Evets]

Nobody seems to have mentioned that Clancy wrote about taking an airliner down with a laser device in Rainbow Six.

In the book, two operatives flash a really really bright light at the cockpit of a landing plane. I don't remember if it called it a laser, but anything but a laser would show an extremely visible point of assault. Simple concept. Attack the enemy with lights.

The defense? Reflective windshields. Would a laser penetrate a one-way mirror?

Re:Friggin' ...

[pyrote]

you're correct. the whole internet should be taken down and replaced with tsunami news and discussion and donation soliciting for the next month at least.

no thanks, my cable already has.

On a serious note (for the previous AC), maybee some of us would like the distraction? I'm poor, bad back, and can't help monitarily or physically. I don't need the guilt trip. heck I can't even give blood due to mono from younger years.

I enjoy the distraction personally.

How about this site?

[normanc]

This guy is selling a ton of lasers: http://www.wickedlasers.com/ These lasers are labeled as class IIIa pointers (5mW) yet come up to 50-60 mW depending on how much the buyer wants to pay. With lots of these things getting pumped on the market illegally, I would say this is much more of an issue than the large ones from the "accused site" that are certified! People need to get their stories straight before pointing fingers! -Norman

Re:When green lasers are outlawed, only outlaws wi

[PalmMP3]

You'll take my green lasers when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers.

"Your proposal is acceptable."
"AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!" *MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH* (Quote from "Men in Black")

Easier than you think

[alienmole]

The reason you can't shoot pilots flying a jumbo jet with a rifle is that bullets don't travel at the speed of light.

Which is precisely why using a laser makes it so easy - the beam goes exactly where you point it, effectively instantly. As for doing the math, you forgot to do the math about beam spread, and you got the target size wrong by many orders of magnitude. Read about lasers blinding people, and you'll find that a beam that lights up a large part of the cockpit can blind someone. All in all, this is a lot easier than you think.

fucking please

[zagmar]

we all know it's either the limp wristed europeans, or the camel-fucking arabs...

Re:fucking please

[normanc]

No it's the bird busters! http://www.birdbusters.net/laser.asp/ -Norman

Re:fucking please

[easter1916]

No, it's not us Europeans. Being such limp-wrists, we decided not to do anything and instead to watch as the cheeseburger-munching obese Americans gorge themselves to death on fast food.

A physicist's perspective

[tbo]

IAAP (I am a physicist). I do not work with lasers, but have taken a graduate level course in non-linear optics that primarily focused on lasers.

It is quite possible to damage a pilot's eyes at a range of a few miles, using only commercial laser systems. If done by competent individuals, it would probably involve a pulsed infrared laser (harder to detect, and the eye is more susceptible to near IR than to visible). A Nd:YAG laser (1064 nm) would be ideal.

Since a pulsed laser is used, there's no need for tracking the plane. A single 10-nanosecond pulse would be sufficient. At 10 - 20 pulses per second, you could just scan the sky in the area of the plane.

After reading the story, I did some rough calculations. For the above-mentioned laser, the laser beam would do damage (although likely not sufficient to totally blind the pilot) at ranges of up to two miles, and the beam would have a spot size several meters in diameter at that range. Obviously, with additional optics, range and spot size could be changed.

It seems to me that the laser could simply be mounted to a scope on a tripod (after some careful alignment), and that targetting by hand would work at least some of the time.

All this aside, I don't think the recent cases are anything to be worried about. More likely it's just a nutbar with a relatively weak visible laser (I assume the laser was in the visible range because the pilots reported it, and I doubt commercial planes are equipped to detect IR lasers). If it was someone serious, they'd be using IR lasers, and we wouldn't know until pilots started getting eye damage.

That said, the overall risk of plane crashes from this form of attack is low. If the airport and immediate area are kept secure (and they should be if only to guard against Stinger-style missile attacks), it's very unlikely someone with a commercial laser could get close enough to completely blind a pilot. Military or custom-built research lasers could blind from greater distances, but such systems are very finicky, and I can't see terrorists pulling that off.

Finally, I'd like to address a few points other people have brought up. If the polarization and angle of the beam are chosen correctly, virtually none will be reflected off the plane's window, and all will be transmitted (see Brewster's Angle). For modest laser powers, the damage to the retina will be localized to where the laser beam is imaged, leaving much of the pilot's vision intact. Bad for the pilot, but he could probably still land. For more intense beams, other damage mechanisms come into play (apparently for severe cases there is an actual popping sound perceived by the victim as the laser pulse creates a small shock wave inside the eye), and more of the victim's vision could be damaged.

Protective goggles aren't really an option, as they only protect against one wavelength. Attackers could then switch to a different type of laser (Ti:saph?). Combining goggles leads to virtually no light getting through.

References
Journal of Biomedical Optics 4(3), 337-344 (July 1999).
Big Sky Laser CFR-800 spec sheet

Re:A physicist's perspective

[valdezjuan]

One thing in this post just doesn't sit right with me (though I still enjoyed the post).

That said, the overall risk of plane crashes from this form of attack is low. If the airport and immediate area are kept secure (and they should be if only to guard against Stinger-style missile attacks), it's very unlikely someone with a commercial laser could get close enough to completely blind a pilot.

Have you ever flown into Mccarran International Airport in Las Vegas, Nv.? Not only does the approach path fly over a vast part of Henderson and Las Vegas but any nut job in a hotel on the strip facing Henderson (a suburb of Vegas) can watch airplanes land. This along with the 'lookout' which is a parking lot on the airport land with about 15 or so spots (with only a fence seperating it from the runway), makes this sort of attack very real. Also the San Diego and San Fransico airports have approaches over water, so a wacko can sit in a boat and try this. Even the military base in Las Vegas has a flight path that puts them over the vast majority of the town, and we house one of the larger fighter wings (at least I think we do).

The sad fact is that these airports were all built when such things were not a consideration and they can't very well go knocking on peoples doors and make them move to put up a protective perimeter or completely seal a harbor. Not to mention (at least in the case of Las Vegas) there are numerous mountains with public access (Vegas sits in a valley, mountains on both sides) where a potential attacker could have a grand time.

So goggles wouldn't be totally effective but is there something that could be added to the window of the cockpit to prevent these sort of attacks? Maybe some coating to deflect the laser or bounce it off like radar (all I know about lasers I learned from watching Real Genius). I just can't think of a realistic method of protecting the grounds around the airport. In my mind the security would have to come from something on the plan (a technological solution), something to totally defuse it.

Re:A physicist's perspective

[tbo]

Also the San Diego and San Fransico airports have approaches over water, so a wacko can sit in a boat and try this.

Good point. I often fly via SFO, so I should consider this further.

So goggles wouldn't be totally effective but is there something that could be added to the window of the cockpit to prevent these sort of attacks? Maybe some coating to deflect the laser or bounce it off like radar (all I know about lasers I learned from watching Real Genius).

No, an attacker can always just tune the laser to a frequency that isn't blocked. If you try to make goggles (or a film) that's effective against several different common laser frequencies, you'll end up with something that doesn't transmit any light at all. The only real option I can see is to eliminate windows, and have cameras on the outside of the plane, coupled to monitors. Of course, then lasers could be used to blind the cameras...

Re:A physicist's perspective

[StarsAreAlsoFire]

The cameras would be more robust than a human eye, and could turn off until safe to re-open.

And it isn't like you need to be able to see OUT to land on a commercial jet -- a camera pointing DOWN would tell the pilot all that the instruments can't.

Or just push the 'Land' button. Planes have been landing using autopilot for quite some time now.

Minor problem...

[The Dodger]

Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons (Protocol IV to the 1980 Convention), 13 October 1995

Article 1
It is prohibited to employ laser weapons specifically designed, as their sole combat function or as one of their combat functions, to cause permanent blindness to unenhanced vision, that is to the naked eye or to the eye with corrective eyesight devices. The High Contracting Parties shall not transfer such weapons to any State or non-State entity.

Article 2
In the employment of laser systems, the High Contracting Parties shall take all feasible precautions to avoid the incidence of permanent blindness to unenhanced vision. Such precautions shall include training of their armed forces and other practical measures.

Article 3
Blinding as an incidental or collateral effect of the legitimate military employment of laser systems, including laser systems used against optical equipment, is not covered by the prohibition of this Protocol.

Article 4
For the purpose of this protocol "permanent blindness" means irreversible and uncorrectable loss of vision which is seriously disabling with no prospect of recovery. Serious disability is equivalent to visual acuity of less than 20/200 Snellen measured using both eyes.

Captain D.

Re:Minor problem...

[LaCosaNostradamus]

Wow! Are you quoting the Geneva Conventions? Weren't they described as "quaint" by the candidate for America's Attorney General ... just when he was writing the memos for justification of torture in Gitmo and other prisons? Wow! How un-fucking-believably pointless was your quote.

America and the "terrorists" will just do whatever they damned well please as they slug it out. No written word matters in a war like this.

Re:When green lasers are outlawed, only outlaws wi

[Mycroft_VIII]

Of course your joking, but your sorta right to.
it does say "arms" and Jefferson when asked what 'arms' meant wrote "any sword of the soldier, however terrible".
The reason I say sorta is because lasers aren't directly a soldier's weapon, yet.
And yeah, I'm not entirely serious eighter, just easily amused. :)

Mycroft

Who needs lasers...?

[Firefly1]

As John Clark and Ding Chavez demonstrated in 'Debt of Honor', a halogen light with the proper focusing - easily disguised as photographic equipment - does the job just fine. And this book was originally published back in 1994.

Re:They could, but why bother?

[Mycroft_VIII]

The sad truth is that it really is that easy.
That's why I don't really see the point of going nuts with the patriot act, and other crap they want to do to 'protect' us.
You really do lose both and desrve neighter when you sacrife freedoms for security and safety.
Only the most draconian lockdown imaginable could significantly limit what a few determined individuals with a little knowledge and willingness/madness could do before hundreds were at risk and likely harmed/dead.

Mycroft

About your sig ...

[some guy I know]

Member of the future Elite Slashdot 6 Digit ID Society

The article to which your sig links contains the following passage:

Nothing will enhance your life more than knowing you are part of the 900,000 people (assuming no one has ID "0") who were wise enough to stop posting anonymously.[*]

The number should be 999,999.

[*]The quoted text was probably reproduced under some "Fair Use" provision or other of current copyright law, and thus hopefully does not constitute copyright infringement, but who knows these days?

How to find and discourage the perp.s?

[36-bitter]

In SF stories the good guys are always backtracking LIDAR hits to find and nail the bad guys across millions of km. So, how hard (and expensive) is it today for a moving platform to get a decent fix on the source of a beam that tracks it for a few seconds? What about a cordon of low-flying drones watching 24x7 for the scatter from such beams at major airports? What about fixed sensors at airport control towers?

If we decided to allocate serious resources to the task, how good and how cheap could it be a year from now?

Maybe turning these lasers into a big sign saying, "here I am, come arrest me" would be enough, but what exactly *should* the response be? A couple of burps from a Vulcan cannon would probably discourage repeats, but that's kind of chancy in urban areas, and arming commercial aircraft doesn't sound like a good idea anyway. Maybe the drones could send one of their number to zip over and watch the origin until the cops arrive.

C'mon, we need to come up with a targeted solution, or some well-meaning idiot with his hands over his eyes will say, "well, I don't see any reason for civillians to own lasers," and there goes a whole lot of legitimate uses.

Can we stop this?

[ArtStone]

By "Can we stop this?", I mean - can we (and people in the media or talking to the media) stop giving advice to people who want to kill us - by telling them what they're doing wrong or how they could do it better or more effectively?

Self censorship is much more preferable than the alternative.

Re:Hmm. I dunno.

[ScentCone]

Wow, folks are missing the point here. The idea is not that someone on the ground can "see" a passenger/pilot's actual eyes, only that their eyes are exposed, in a direct line of sight, to a laser pointed from the ground. Earlier posts questioned whether a laser could even make it into the aircraft (because of angles, etc), and my take on it is that if you can see the ground from the aircraft, then something eminating FROM the ground can make it to your eyes.

There's no need for someone on the ground to target (even to be able to target) a particular person's eyes in order for a laser, swepts across the plane, to periodically cross the windows of the flight or passenger cabins. Some of that exposure is going to hit glass near folk's faces, and they're going to perceive the laser. At thousands of feet, the beam is going to be at least several inches wide, and someone with a minute or so to cast the laser is going to cross the cockpit windows at least a few times if they're trying.

Coincidence?

[HexDoll]

Too bad we can't seal off their part of the atmosphere too. Let them be destroyed by their own greenhouse effect.

Re:Coincidence?

[myowntrueself]

Well... if we made the wall high enough.

Then it'd have a triple purpose; seal off their borders, seal in their greenhouse gasses and it shouldn't be too hard to use the outside of the wall for a space elevator!

No one is save

[Britz]

The little green men will come and get ya all!!! ... green lasers? I thought we were talking about the FBI. Sorry.

Re:When green lasers are outlawed, only outlaws wi

[randomblast]

Never before have I felt so glad to be British.
Excuse me while I frighten small children with my extremely powerful ray of pure light.

Re:Hmm. I dunno.

[ScentCone]

Silly dumbass me. In fact, I'm such a dumbass that my original comment was ONLY in response to another poster's question about whether a laser from the ground could even make it into the cockpit. My take on it is that there are angles of approach, as well as turning roll that would present more than enough opportunity for someone "scrubbing" (not perfectly tracking, give me a break) a laser around on the plane to occasionally, during approach, catch the glass on the cockpit.

BTW, if I can keep a rifle scope steady enough to maintain a group of shots within a 12-inch circle at 350+ yards (with the cross-hairs, by the way, not obscuring the target beyond seeing it clearly), then I think it's safe to say I can keep it in the neighborhood of a 5-foot area out at less than 10 times the distance. Yes, I know the target is moving (though neither I nor the target are jumping around - the plane has tons of inertia and is stable, and I'm bracing whatever I'm pointing on some sort of stationary support). Remember: you only have to wash past the cockpit window with a bright green laser momentarily to generate the sort of reports that we're hearing. But then, I'm a dumbass.

Re:Solution: Ban All Lasers from the private Citiz

[stonecypher]

For get the multitude of legal uses

Oh yeah, I know I couldn't survive daily life without my high-powered industrial laser.

Legit Use

[nurb432]

While you may not see a legit use, I can.

The fact that there are any legal uses for a citizen makes my point.

Its not about 'need', its about improper restrictions. One doesnt 'need' much of anything, and most things have dual uses. But that does not mean they should be restricted. If that is the case then we wouldnt have any rights at all, as even words can be used for evil...

Re:Legit Use

[stonecypher]

While you may not see a legit use, I can.

Ahem. That's not at all what I said. What I was doing was mocking your supposition of a multitude of legitimate uses. The fact of the matter is that it's difficult to come up with any use at all, let alone something which wouldn't be better served with an X-Acto knife or a carbide band saw.

The fact that there are any legal uses for a citizen makes my point.

Horseshit. There are legal and legitimate uses for citizens to have syringes, teflon bullets, automatic weapons, nuclear-pile reactors, fine-grained spectrothermal imagers, weaponized cholera, tanks, 747s, hundreds of industrial poisons, and marijuana.

Just because you can think of a way to use something which doesn't break the law doesn't mean that it's a good idea to put it into the public hands. I could re-caulk cracks without pulling tiles, shatter supporting rock to get rock flakes, take down entire herds of deer, provide massively profitable energy to my neighborhood, scan the street for everything from utility failure to natural disaster to communist infiltration, wipe out my gopher problem (there are strains of cholera which cross that particular species barrier, before you get all pseudo-science "human diseases don't leave humans" on me,) pull out the root stump in my back yard, fly my highschool graduating class to 'Nam, and make and use my own environmentally friendly rope.

Horseshit. There are legal and legitimate uses for citizens to have syringes, teflon bullets, automatic weapons, nuclear-pile reactors, fine-grained spectrothermal imagers, weaponized cholera, tanks, 747s, hundreds of industrial poisons, and marijuana.

Instead, however, the government would like to stop me from extending the drug problem, shooting through police armor, taking down entire herds of people, blowing things up real good-like, sniping through walls, infecting asshats on slashdot, blowing shit up real good, blowing shit up real good, poisoning a city, or getting high.

Y'see, here's the hint that you don't seem to grasp: bad risks are involved in sharing good technologies.

Here's the other hint that you don't seem to grasp: bullshit, you can't think of one single goddamned legitimate thing to do as an average citizen which couldn't be done with $200 of gear from Black and Decker. You don't run raves, you don't cut mass metals or mass plastics, you don't clean buildings, you don't align antennae over multiple miles, etc.

Its not about 'need', its about improper restrictions.

Well, I'm sorry you think that I don't need to be protected from 1) terrorists getting things they shouldn't have any need for in order to blind planes, or more importantly, 2) jackass self-important college kids getting lasers and burning out my tires because they think it's funny.

One doesnt 'need' much of anything, and most things have dual uses.

Don't be an ass. One needs food, transportation, simple tools, a way to cook, a way to refrigerate, a bed, a roof, a job, clothing, etc. You're trying to make this into a false bifurcation.

This isn't about need at all. This is about someone saying "but I want a giant thermal laser and you shouldn't be able to say no!" The fuck do you want it for? Yes, they should be able to say no. Frankly, at this point, I wish your food and clothing vendors could say no, so that you could be forced to sit inside and starve your pasty ass to death.

and most things have dual uses.

Yes, you keep handwaving away its supposedly obvious end-user applications. Need it to cut your tomatoes because that ginsu just won't hold its edge, hm?

But that does not mean they should be restricted.

No, but the appallingly high level of danger combined with the absolute lack of reasonable justification does. I mean, a car is both more useful and far less dangerous than an industrial laser, and we restrict the hell out of them. Do you honestly believe tha

Re:Legit Use

[nurb432]

Simple response to a overly wordy comment:

If i have a legal intended use for something i have the RIGHT to have it, if i so choose.

No one, i repeat NO ONE has a right to tell me no.

As far as what id use it for: mainly to etch castings and metal turnings.. but my intended use was totally aside the point..

And as an aside, actually I have been trained to use high power lasers in industrial situations, so i wont be running around 'cutting peoples arms off'.. but even if i wasnt, its still my right.

Now if i was a concited felon.. we might have something to discuss..

FBI now talking to someone about this.

[ScentCone]

Seems that the FBI and the port authority are talking to a fellow on this very subject.

Updated article...

[maunleon]

http://www.dailyrecord.com/news/articles/news2-las er.htm

Apparently it was a "laser pointer" the guy bought off of the internet? Personally, I have not seen any green laser pointers...

Making it even more complicated:

[AtariAmarok]

"However, what is a more important effect is that illegal aliens are counted for purposes of representation by the census-that effect is less obviously one that benefits democrats"

Making it even more complicated is the fact that a certain political party (guess which one) is working to destroy the census by making it much less accurate. They want to suplement actual counted individuals with any number of phantoms made up using trendy "statistical" methods that don't require actual counting.

Fortunately, so far, the powers that be have maintained that you really have to count only real people in the census.

Thanks....

[redwoodtree]

Yes, that's what I was in fact trying to say.

However, as it turns out, it's not that hard as I thought. They just caught a guy who admitted to doing it.

Man admits to points at aircract . I guess these really are bored hobbyists.

The sick park is he tried to blame it on his kid!

Re:Hmm. I dunno.

[ScentCone]

It *seems* highly unlikely

Just in case you're still following this story, we have here exactly the case of someone hand-pointing a laser at an aircraft, illuminating the cockpit multiple times, and getting caught doing it. Of course, he first blamed it on his daughter!

Charges against NJ man for lasering aircraft

[ScentCone]

A man in NJ has been charged with exactly what's been described here. Indications are that he hand-pointed the laser, occasionally caught the cockpit, and thus illuminated the pilots, who very much noticed.

Americans

[hjf]

Man I was reading all this and i think, how can you americans live in the most powerful country in the world and be such motherfucking pieces of cunts? Damn, first of all you have to solve all those fucking racism issues inside your country, and not spend all that fucking money chasing kids with laser pointers.
The worst is, that the slashdot reader is not just average joe. And even then most of the posts treat the lasers issue as a FUCKING REAL ISSUE, when it's just NOTHING. You can't even say "bomb" in an airport or loiter around fucking new york city without going to jail. And the saddest thing is, one of your fucking presidents was the one who said "We have nothing to fear but fear itself".
How can you live in a country where any officer has every right to put a fucking gun on your face for no reason? Man your country has some FUCKING SERIOUS ISSUES.

let me quote an interesting song, by an american band.

Don't wanna be an American idiot.
Don't want a nation under the new mania.
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mind fuck America.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alienation.
Everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
For that's enough to argue.

Well maybe I'm the faggot America.
I'm not a part of a redneck agenda.
Now everybody do the propaganda.
And sing along in the age of paranoia.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alienation.
Everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
For that's enough to argue.

Don't wanna be an American idiot.
One nation controlled by the media.
Information age of hysteria.
It's calling out to idiot America.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alienation.
Everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
For that's enough to argue.